Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699: The Imagined Empire 3031226178, 9783031226175

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Praise for Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699
Contents
1 Introduction: The Imagined Empire
Robert Brancetour: The First English Traveller to Safavid Persia
Early Modern English Theatre and the East: The Place of Persia and Plays of Persia
Tudor Plays of Persia
Plays of Persia in the Stuart Period and the Inter-Regnum
Restoration Plays of Persia
2 ‘In This Noble Region’: Politics and Counsel in The Godly Queene Hester (Anonymous, c. 1530)
Introduction
Godly Queene Hester
Hester: The Political Contexts
Conclusion
3 ‘[A]dvice Unto a Prince’: Kingship and Counsel in Kyng Daryus (Anonymous, 1565) and Cambises (Thomas Preston, c. 1560)
Introduction
Kyng Daryus
Cambises
4 ‘A Crown Enchas’d with Pearl and Gold’: Wealth and Absolute Rule in The Warres of Cyrus (Richard Farrant, 1576–1580) and Tamburlaine the Great Parts 1 and 2 (Christopher Marlowe, 1587–1588)
Introduction: Persian Gold
The Warres of Cyrus
Tamburlaine the Great Parts 1 and 2
Conclusion
5 ‘I Wish to Be None Other but as He’: Friendship and Counsel in The Travailes of the Three English Brothers (1607) by John Day, William Rowley, and George Wilkins and Contemporary Closet Drama
Introduction: Perceptions of Persia at the Turn of the Century
Alexander, Daniel, and the Revival of Classical Persia
The Sherley Brothers and Persia in Early Modern English Travel Writing
The Travailes of the Three English Brothers (1607)
Conclusion
6 ‘Read[ing] Philosophy to a King’: Ideals of Monarchy in William Cartwright’s The Royall Slave (1636)
Introduction: The Sherleys and the Failure of a ‘Diplomatic Fiction’
William Cartwright and The Royall Slave
Kingship in The Royall Slave
Conclusion: Detaching from Contemporary Persia
7 ‘[R]eally Acted in Persia’: Counsel, Regicide and Restoration in John Denham, the Sophy (1642) and Robert Baron, Mirza (1655)
Introduction: Persia and the Divine Right of Kings
The Sophy
Mirza
Conclusion
8 To ‘Dispose of Crowns’: Conversion, the Authority of Monarchy and the Issue of Succession: Elkanah Settle’s Cambyses (1667)
Introduction: Cambyses’ Dedication
Conversion and Identity
Authority in Cambyses
Conclusion
9 ‘The King, Who Loves the Persian Mode’: Tyranny and Excess in Nathaniel Lee’s The Rival Queens (1677)
Introduction: The Rival Queens
Alexander
Alexander: Effeminacy and Excess
Alexander: Tyranny in Context
Conclusion
10 ‘[D]evour’d by Luxury’: Gender, Governance and Absolute Kingship in John Crowne’s Darius, King of Persia (1688) and Colley Cibber’s Xerxes (1699)
Introduction: Crisis of Political Authority
John Crowne, Darius and Two Modes of Kingship
Darius and Persia
Colley Cibber, Xerxes, Rebellion and the Divine Right of Kings
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

NEW TRANSCULTURALISMS, 1400 –1800

Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699 The Imagined Empire chloë houston

New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800

Series Editors Ann Rosalind Jones, Department of Comparative Literature, Smith College, Northampton, MA, USA Jyotsna G. Singh, Department of English, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA Mihoko Suzuki, Center for the Humanities, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA

This series, now published by Palgrave Macmillan, presents studies of early modern contacts and exchanges among the states, polities, cultures, religions, and entrepreneurial organizations of Europe; Asia, including the Levant and East India/Indies; Africa; and the Americas. Books in New Transculturalisms will continue to investigate diverse figures, such as travelers, merchants, cultural inventors—explorers, mapmakers, artists, craftsmen, and writers—as they operated in political, mercantile, sexual, affective, and linguistic economies. We encourage authors to reflect on their own methodologies in relation to issues and theories relevant to the study of transculturalism, translation, and transnationalism. New Transculturalisms is proud to have published Jennifer Linhart Wood’s Sounding Otherness in Early Modern Drama and Travel: Uncanny Vibrations in the English Archive, winner of the MRDS 2021 Bevington Award for Best New Book.

Chloë Houston

Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699 The Imagined Empire

Chloë Houston University of Reading Reading, UK

New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800 ISBN 978-3-031-22617-5 ISBN 978-3-031-22618-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22618-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Pictures Now/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Will

Acknowledgements

I am fortunate to work alongside many generous scholars from whose research and friendship I have greatly benefitted. My thanks to anyone who has listened to me thinking through ideas for this book at the various conferences and seminars at which I have presented them, and especially to those who asked questions and shared their own research. There are four people whom I would particularly like to thank. The first is Matthew Dimmock, who discussed Persia with me when I began shaping the research project which would eventually become this book. It has taken about fifteen years to come to fruition, and I am grateful for Mat’s encouragement and generosity with his scholarship during that time. The second is Matthew Birchwood, whose Staging Islam in England, has been a frequent source of both information and inspiration. Any student of my subject is indebted to the work of Jane Grogan; the battered state of my copy of The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing is testament to how often I have turned to it. Jane, too, has generously shared her work with me. I am also grateful to Ladan Niayesh for her support and guidance, and for her foundational research in this field; Ladan’s 2008 article on ‘Shakespeare’s Persians’ was a starting-point for this book. Earlier versions of parts of Chapter 6 appeared in Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 54:2 (2014), 455–73, and of parts of Chapter 5 in Studies in Travel Writing, 13:2 (2009), 141–152. Particular thanks go to my friends and colleagues, and especially: Kate Arthur, Jerry Brotton, Rebecca Bullard, Rosanna Cox, Frances Eaton, Eva

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Johanna Holmberg, Sophie Lemercier-Goddard, Kurosh Meshkat, Abid Masood, Jyotsna Singh, Olivia Smith, Adam Smyth, Leah Veronese, Laura Williamson, and Andrew Zurcher. I appreciate the time and care taken by the anonymous readers at Palgrave Macmillan in commenting on this book in draft form. Any errors that remain are my own. I would like to thank the staff of the libraries whose resources I have used, and especially the Bodleian Libraries, the British Library and Reading University Library. I am also grateful to the team at Palgrave Macmillan, and especially Sam Stocker, Supraja Yegnaraman at Springer Nature, and the editors of this series. In particular, I thank Jyotsna Singh for her kindness and support. This book could not have been written without the friendship and encouragement of my fantastic colleagues in the Department of English Literature and the School of Literature and Languages at the University of Reading, and to them I am very grateful. I am lucky to have worked with some wonderful students, too; special thanks to those who have taken my third-year and Master’s options on early modern drama. I would also like to thank my friends and family, who may reasonably have started to wonder if ‘the Persia book’ was an elaborate ruse. I owe more debts than I can count to friends in the village who have picked up children, walked dogs, listened and encouraged; particular thanks to Angharad Bradley, Becky Peates, and Darran and Emma Taylor. Deep gratitude to my mother, Kathy Williams, for her love and confidence in me, and her editorial insight. Thank you to my father and stepmother, Tom and Anne Houston, and to the extended Mandy clan. So much love and gratitude to my sons, Ed and Felix, for all the joy they bring. Thanks, too, to Inca and Alba, for being my best girls. And finally, in gratitude for his love and good companionship throughout this long project, this book is dedicated to my husband, Will Mandy, with my love.

Praise for Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699

“Persia in Early Modern English Drama: 1530–1699: The Imagined Empire is a shrewd, timely and compelling study of the multiple meanings and interests of Persia to English readers and theatregoers over almost two centuries. It proves an immensely rich subject of study - not just revealing English conceptions of Persia and the Middle East as these developed with increased contact, but serving again and again as a powerful vehicle for self-reflection, specifically on domestic political and cultural issues, across this period of significant political change. Beautifully written and extensively researched, the book is brimming with important details that will interest any scholar of early modern English culture as it traces how English dramatic engagements with Persia look inwards as well as outwards, whether in closet drama or on the public stage, during the very period in which English diplomatic, commercial and political engagements with the East were established and began to take imperial shape.” —Professor Jane Grogan, University College Dublin, author of The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, 1549–1622

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PRAISE FOR PERSIA IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH …

“Carefully researched and clearly argued throughout, the book draws attention to specific contexts behind the ever-changing image of Persia from 1530 to 1699, and in the process offers compelling readings of fourteen plays about the Persian Empire, as well as important observations on the origins of imperialism and Orientalism in Britain.” —Kurosh Meshkat, The British Library, Persian Gulf History Specialist, The British Library, London, UK

Contents

1

1

Introduction: The Imagined Empire

2

‘In This Noble Region’: Politics and Counsel in The Godly Queene Hester (Anonymous, c. 1530)

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‘[A]dvice Unto a Prince’: Kingship and Counsel in Kyng Daryus (Anonymous, 1565) and Cambises (Thomas Preston, c. 1560)

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‘A Crown Enchas’d with Pearl and Gold’: Wealth and Absolute Rule in The Warres of Cyrus (Richard Farrant, 1576–1580) and Tamburlaine the Great Parts 1 and 2 (Christopher Marlowe, 1587–1588)

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3

4

5

6 7

‘I Wish to Be None Other but as He’: Friendship and Counsel in The Travailes of the Three English Brothers (1607) by John Day, William Rowley, and George Wilkins and Contemporary Closet Drama

105

‘Read[ing] Philosophy to a King’: Ideals of Monarchy in William Cartwright’s The Royall Slave (1636)

133

‘[R]eally Acted in Persia’: Counsel, Regicide and Restoration in John Denham, the Sophy (1642) and Robert Baron, Mirza (1655)

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CONTENTS

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To ‘Dispose of Crowns’: Conversion, the Authority of Monarchy and the Issue of Succession: Elkanah Settle’s Cambyses (1667)

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‘The King, Who Loves the Persian Mode’: Tyranny and Excess in Nathaniel Lee’s The Rival Queens (1677)

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‘[D]evour’d by Luxury’: Gender, Governance and Absolute Kingship in John Crowne’s Darius, King of Persia (1688) and Colley Cibber’s Xerxes (1699)

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9 10

Bibliography

265

Index

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The Imagined Empire

Robert Brancetour: The First English Traveller to Safavid Persia In February 1530, the English cloth merchant Robert Brancetour met Hieronymo de Balbi, a native Piedmontese and a knight of Rhodes, in Aleppo, Syria.1 Balbi was en route to Persia via the Ottoman empire, an emissary from the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, who wished to persuade the Persian Shah, Tahmasp I, to join forces with him against the Ottomans. In the early sixteenth century, it was widely held

1 Much of the information for this account of Brancetour’s travels comes from J. J. Scarisbrick, ‘The First Englishman Round the Cape of Good Hope?’ Historical Research, 34 (1961), 165–77. Scarisbrick draws on a letter sent by Sir Thomas Wyatt from the court of Charles V to the court of Henry VIII in early 1540 (BM Harl. MS. 282, fos. 83 ff; Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII , ed. by J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R. H. Brodie, 21 vols (London 1862–1910), vol. 15, no. 38). In the sources, Robert’s surname is variously spelt Brancestor, Brensteur and (according to Scarisbrick, although I have not been able to find an occurrence of this last), Bramston. I believe that Robert Brancetour may also be the ‘M. Bramsitour’ referred to in a letter from [A Servant of Richard Pate] to Master Philyp [Hoby ?], sent from Palermo on 30 September 1535 (‘Henry VIII: September 1535, 26–30’, in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 9, August –December 1535, ed. by James Gairdner (London, 1886), pp. 143–65. British History Online. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/ letters-papers-hen8/vol9/pp143-165 [accessed 18 March 2021]).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Houston, Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699, New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22618-2_1

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that a single dynasty would come to rule the whole world; the Ottoman sultans, and the Spanish Habsburgs, including Charles, were at this time the most likely contenders for world domination, and the Turkish invasion of Europe seemed a real prospect.2 Brancetour, according to some sources, was, like Balbi, mid-journey, on a pilgrimage to the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, now in Egypt. He had, at some point prior to 1530, left his native London for Venice, where he had made his fortune in the lucrative trading of the Venetian ships which carried goods between Aleppo and Venice and thence into Europe.3 Both Balbi and Brancetour were engaged in the complex inter-relations between the various empires jostling for power on the world stage: one in politics and the other in commerce. By the time of their meeting, Balbi had been in Aleppo for six months, preparing for the potentially dangerous and costly onwards journey to Persia. He had already attempted once to begin it but had been forced to turn back. Balbi’s letter of 17 February to the Emperor records that he ‘[w]as obliged, when almost on the frontiers of Persia, to retrace his steps from fear of the Turks who guard the passes’. He ‘[a]ttempted then to cross the desert to La Baserre (Basra); but found the road too long and impracticable in his present state of health’. Providence, however, was on Balbi’s side: ‘God […] has inspired him for the Emperor’s service, for he has lately made the acquaintance of a Venetian gentleman […] who has kindly procured him some trusty guides knowing the country well’. The ‘Venetian gentleman’ was Andrea Morezin or Morosini, and, thanks to his guides, Balbi hoped to be ‘at the Court of the Sophi’ in a month’s time. He planned to ‘take his departure on the 26th in company with the English gentleman, who, after he is gone, will report on the doings of the Sophi, and any other thing that may interest His Imperial Majesty’.4 The ‘English gentleman’ was Robert Brancetour. As Balbi’s record shows, Brancetour volunteered not only to accompany Balbi on

2 Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Three Ways to Be Alien: Travails and Encounters in the Early Modern World (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2011), p. 78. 3 Scarisbrick, ‘The First Englishman Round the Cape of Good Hope?’, 170. 4 Chevalier de Balbi to the Emperor, 17 February 1530, ‘Spain: February 1530, 1–20’,

in Calendar of State Papers, Spain, Volume 4 Part 1, Henry VIII, 1529–1530, ed. by Pascual de Gayangos (London, 1879), pp. 444–57. British History Online http://www. british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/spain/vol4/no1/pp444-457 [accessed 18 March 2021].

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his journey to Persia, but also to remain behind there to report from the Shah’s court back to Balbi after the latter had returned to the imperial court. Exactly why Brancetour was prepared to undertake both the risk of the journey and the prolonged stay in Persia is not recorded; perhaps he hoped to ingratiate himself with the Habsburgs, as his journey to Persia would effectively make him an agent of Charles V in an uncertain and perilous endeavour, with no suggestion of immediate reward for himself. Whatever his reasons, at the end of February 1530, Robert Brancetour set out with Hieronymo de Balbi for Persia, probably travelling on a passport that had originally been issued to Morosini. By April 1530, the party had got as far as Babylon, and Balbi wrote to Charles with encouraging news: the Babylonian authorities had forwarded his letters to the Persian ‘Sophi’, who had replied favourably, and he would be provided with an escort for the remainder of the journey. Balbi’s health, however, already weakened by his first attempt at reaching Persia, further deteriorated, and he died before he could continue his mission. Brancetour chose to carry on to Persia alone. Having received money and ‘sure tokens’ from the dying Balbi, he resumed the journey, and when he reached the court of Shah Tahmasp at Qazwin later that year, Brancetour became the first Englishman to visit Safavid Persia.5 When he left Persia in 1531, Brancetour chose to travel by sea rather than risking the return trip through the Ottoman empire; Morosini had already been executed by the Turks for having given his passport to the Englishman. Having taken refuge with the Portuguese at Hormuz, Brancetour travelled thence to Portugal in 1532, remaining on the continent rather than returning to England.6 Almost ten years after Brancetour’s visit to Tahmasp’s court, he was the subject of an enquiry to Charles V by Sir Thomas Wyatt, acting in

5 The rule of the Safavid dynasty over Persia is usually given as lasting from 1501 to 1722, standing ‘between Iran’s medieval and modern history’; Andrew J. Newman, Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), p. 2. The Western understanding of the history of Iran was summarised by Roger Savory in Iran Under the Safavids (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). More recent studies include Colin Mitchell and Roger Savory, eds, New Perspectives on Safavid Iran: Empire and Society (London: Routledge, 2011); Willem Floor, ed., Iran and the World in the Safavid Age: International Contact and Political Development in Early Modern Persia (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012); C. P. Melville, Safavid Persia in the Age of Empires (London: I. B. Tauris, 2021). 6 Subrahmanyam, Three Ways to Be Alien, p. 83.

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his capacity at Henry VIII’s ambassador. Wyatt carried letters from the king, asking that Charles return the English rebel, Robert Brancetour, to England, as agreed in treaties between the two states; Brancetour was viewed as a traitor because he had attempted to incite some Englishmen in Spain to rebel against Henry.7 In conversation with Wyatt, the Emperor identified Brancetour to Wyatt as ‘he that hath been in Perse’. When Wyatt expressed some doubt about this, Charles assured him that he knew it to be true ‘by good tokens’, namely Balbi’s testimony: when he [Balbi] saw he should die, he opened his charge unto this man [Brancetour] and told him what service he should do to me and to all Christendom, if he would undertake it. And he did so and it seemed true, for the King of Perse the same time did invade, and he went about the other way by the sailing of the Portygalles and brought me sure tokens of the man as well what money I gave him and other things.8

Brancetour’s success in encouraging the Persians to wage war on the Turks is apparently demonstrated to Charles by the fact that the Persian invasion did indeed take place following Brancetour’s time at Tahmasp’s court, even if the proximity of these events may have been a coincidence of time rather than cause and effect. In any case, Charles refused Wyatt’s request, and Brancetour was released from the temporary arrest under which Wyatt had been able to place him. Both Brancetour’s journey to Persia, in place of Balbi on behalf of Charles, and his subsequent tangle with Henry via Wyatt raise interesting questions about the relationship between England and Persia during this period, and the perception of Persia by the English. When Wyatt wrote ‘Perse’ in his letter in 1540, what did that word mean to him and to his English reader? What images did it conjure, and where did they come from? Henry, as Abid Masood writes, ‘must have learnt about Persia from a variety of diplomatic reports that reached his court from the time he ascended the English throne’ in 1509.9 Masood cites the example of a letter sent by Pope Clement VII to Henry in January 1532, in which 7 Subrahmanyam, Three Ways to Be Alien, p. 82. 8 Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign Henry VIII , 21 vols (London,

1864–1910), vol. 15, p. 15. 9 Hafiz Abid Masood, ‘From Cyrus to Abb¯ as: Staging Persia in Early Modern England’ (DPhil thesis, University of Sussex, 2011), p. 2.

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the Pope points out that the Ottoman Sultan and Safavid Shah may be developing a friendship which will make them into a formidable enemy against the fractured remnants of Christian Europe.10 It is significant that the Pope’s letter focuses on the relationship between the Ottoman empire and Persia as a means of galvanising Henry. Throughout the period, Persia would be understood by the English in contrast to its Ottoman neighbour, and a keen interest would be shown in the relationship between the two. The ambivalence about Persia that this letter raises, as Masood states, also typifies the English attitude to Persia across the early modern era. English understanding of Persia with regard to its potential power over Europe reflected an uneasy balance between optimistic confidence that the Safavids would provide a means of support for Europeans against the Turks and anxiety that the Muslim states might instead unite against their common Christian enemies: ‘The English and larger Christian attitude towards Persia in the first half of the sixteenth century can thus be characterized as balanced between hope and fear’.11 As Masood notes, any peace agreement between Persia and the Ottoman empire would have been perceived as having ‘a potentially great impact on the fate of Christendom’.12 These two factors thus stand out: the understanding of Persia with reference to its relationship with the Ottoman empire and the ambivalent attitude towards Persia as it related to Christian Europe. Both features were to prove important to the various ways in which Persia was perceived and represented in English sources in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was Persia’s relationship to the Ottoman empire that made it of particular interest to both Henry and Charles, but Persia or ‘Perse’ already had a distinct and significant set of meanings for the English reader in the early sixteenth century. Prior to this period, the English had little information about contemporary Persia; knowledge of Persia came from the Bible and from classical literature, largely Herodotus and Xenophon, and thus, it was classical, pre-Islamic, Achaemenid Persia which was likely to have been best known to the early modern English reader, rather than the contemporary Safavid dynasty. One historian of the Achaemenid empire, Pierre Briant, describes the historical and geographical range of

10 Masood, ‘From Cyrus to Abb¯ as’, p. 3. 11 Masood, ‘From Cyrus to Abb¯ as’, p. 3. 12 Masood, ‘From Cyrus to Abb¯ as’, p. 3.

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the Achaemenids as ‘created by the conquests of Cyrus […] and Cambyses’; ‘for more than two centuries [the Achaemenid Empire] extended from the Indus valley to the Aegean Sea, from the Syr Darya to the Persian Gulf and the first cataract of the Nile’ until the death of Darius III.13 The Achaemenid dynasty had been established by Cyrus the Great (558–530 BCE), a figure who was well known in England in the sixteenth century, not least through William Barker’s translation into English of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia in 1552. The Cyropaedia, written in the fourth century BCE, describes the early Achaemenid empire the ‘greatest and most glorious’ of the eastern kingdoms.14 This text and its translation was to influence English political discourse within the mirror-to-princes tradition, to the extent that James VI and I found ‘mirrored in the Cyropaedia an irresistible model of imperial kingship’.15 The Achaemenids, who also included Darius the Great (522–486 BCE) and his son Xerxes (486–465 BCE), established an empire which stretched from modern-day Libya in the west to the Indus and central Asia in the East, and for 220 years ruled ‘an empire more vast and diverse than any previous one’.16 Early modern Europe inherited from the Greeks an indelible image of Persia’s great, powerful and glorious empire. As Elio Brancaforte writes in his study of the German traveller Adam Olearius, who went to Persia in the 1630s and produced written accounts and maps of his journeys, ‘Since the fifth century BC Persia existed in the minds of the Western world as a literary construct derived from antiquity, endlessly varied, copied and emended’.17 It is the notion of Persia as a ‘literary construct’ that the present study wishes to interrogate.

13 Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, trans. by Peter T. Daniels (Winona Lake: Eisenbraums, 2002), p. 1. Briant recognises the problems inherent in the word ‘empire’, which implies a territorial authority not entirely appropriate, and also lacks an exact correspondence in any ancient language. Nonetheless I use ‘empire’ here, though with reservations, due to its ubiquity in the scholarship. 14 Janett Morgan, Greek Perspectives on the Achaemenid Empire: Persia Through the Looking Glass (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), p. 3. 15 Jane Grogan, ‘“Many Cyruses”: Xenophon’s “Cyropaedia” and English Renaissance Humanism’, Hermathena, 183 (2007), 63–74 (64). 16 Newman, Safavid Iran, p. 1; Morgan, Greek Perspectives on the Achaemenid Empire,

p. 2. 17 Elio Christoph Brancaforte, Visions of Persia: Mapping the Travels of Adam Olearius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), p. 5.

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The major classical sources of information on Persia were Xenophon (in the Cyropaedia and Anabasis ), Herodotus’ Histories, Quintus Curtius Rufus’ Historiae, the geographies of Strabo and Pausianias, who included Persia in his travel writings.18 It was from some of these sources, and others, that the early modern period inherited a dominant conception of Persia as barbarous and threatening, placed in opposition to a civilised Greece. One basis for this construction was Aeschylus’ The Persians (472 BCE), described by Edith Hall as ‘the first unmistakable file in the archive of Orientalism, the discourse by which the European imagination has dominated Asia […] by conceptualizing its inhabitants as defeated, luxurious, emotional, cruel, and always as dangerous’.19 The Greco-Persian Wars, the subject of Aeschylus’ play, also dominated an influential source of information about the Persians, Herodotus’ Histories of the wars, the first two books of which were printed as The Famous Hystory of Herodotus in 1584, telling the ‘renowned adventures of the Grecians and Barbarians’. This has developed an understanding that the ancient Greeks viewed ‘the kings of Persia as paragons of Asiatic despotism, barbarity, concupiscence, decadence and irrationality’.20 Nonetheless, as Margaret Meserve has demonstrated, notions of Persian barbarity did not dominate the early modern image of Persia as it developed during the Renaissance revival of classical literature and culture. ‘The humanists’, Meserve argues, ‘were inspired not by Herodotus but by Xenophon’: that is, by images of Cyrus as the ideal philosopher-prince rather than the barbaric despotism. During the course of the fifteenth century, Persia came to be seen as one of many ancient civilizations from whom Christian Europe might hope to learn, a fount of ‘alien wisdom’ on a par with ancient Egypt, India, and Babylon, home to magi, sybils, astrologers, and other visionary seekers of truth.21

In any case, it was classical Persia which probably came most easily to mind when an English reader encountered the word ‘Perse’ in the 18 See Brancaforte, Visions of Persia, p. 5. 19 Edith Hall, Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition Through Tragedy (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 99. 20 Margaret Meserve, Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), p. 218. 21 Meserve, Empires of Islam, p. 218.

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sixteenth century. In the words of Gerald MacLean and Nabil Matar in their influential study of Britain and Islamic countries during this period: in contemporary literature, Persia regularly featured as a biblical as well as a romantic past rather than as an existing present. From the book of Isaiah with its celebration of the Persian king Cyrus, to Herodotus and later Greek historians, the ancient imperial civilization of Darius was most likely to have been more familiar to English readers than the contemporary world of the Safavids.22

Images of classical and biblical Persia were to remain present, even dominant, in English literary culture, even after direct contact with Persia and English travel writings about Persia increased. Nonetheless, as Grogan points out, this should not be taken as an indication of a lack of interest in Safavid Persia, which grew steadily during the sixteenth century.23 This period saw developing interest in Persia due to the role it would play on the international stage but also because of this unique historical character. It is due to this emerging interest that the 1530s saw the earliest uses of Persia in early modern English drama as well as the first recorded visit by an English traveller to the Shah’s court; the starting point for this book is the moment when English interest in Persia began to be explored both on stage and via physical travel. As Brancetour was undertaking his mission to Persia, the anonymous Godly Queene Hester, the first early modern play of Persia, was being written and first performed.24

22 Gerald MacLean and Nabil Matar, Britain and the Islamic World, 1558–1713 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 14. 23 Jane Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, 1549–1622 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 2. 24 Following Jane Grogan, I find ‘plays of Persia’ a more useful category than ‘Persian

plays’. As Grogan points out: ‘While the successful Anglo-Ottoman trade was strongly felt in the forms, characters, and attitudes of early modern drama, those suggestive material and economic realities simply do not obtain in the case of Persia during the period in question. Yet classical Persia still provided plots and possibilities for the stage’; Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 112.

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Early Modern English Theatre and the East: The Place of Persia and Plays of Persia The study of early modern English drama has long noted its engagement with the subject of empire, the increase of European power and the relationship of English to non-English cultures, factors which have been interpreted as contributing to English theatre’s inherent ‘Orientalism’.25 In recent decades, work has begun to establish what Ania Loomba identified in 1996 as ‘the extent and meaning of English Renaissance drama’s fascination with the Orient’.26 During this period, early modern studies have undergone a reorientation, as the study of cultural exchanges and relations between East and West has moved from its periphery to its centre and the shifting nature of the perception and representation of Asia in early modern European literature and culture has been recognised. As Spain, Portugal and other European nations established commercial and diplomatic relationships with Eastern powers in the sixteenth century, the definition of ‘Asia’ in Europe became more clearly refined, although there continued alongside it an abiding notion of classical Asia that had its roots in the ancient world. Edward Said’s model of Orientalism, through which Europe defined itself in relation to an Asian Other,27 its roots in the wellworn practice of creating a West in opposition to an ‘Orient’, has been variously revised, rejected or modified, and historians of early modern literature, culture and art have instead looked to the ‘equal, reciprocal gaze’ and processes of interchange between east and west.28 As part of

25 John M. MacKenzie, Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 177. 26 Ania Loomba, ‘Shakespeare and Cultural Difference’, in Alternative Shakespeares Volume 2, ed. by Terence Hawkes (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 164–91 (p. 188). 27 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978). 28 Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, Global Interests: Renaissance Art Between East and

West (London: Reaktion, 2000), p. 63. On the Renaissance as an era before Orientalism, and critiques of the application of Edward Said’s Orientalism to early modern Anglo-Ottoman encounters, see Richmond Tyler Barbour, Before Orientalism: London’s Theatre of East, 1576–1626 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Matthew Dimmock, New Turkes: Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern England (Burlington: Ashgate, 2005); Daniel Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theatre in the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570–1630 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003); Nabil Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).

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this process, research has turned to the English stage as a site of exploration of images of the Islamic world. As Abdulhamit Arvas has recently noted, there is a rich seam of dramatic material which engaged with Islam and Islamic places and peoples during this period: ‘From 1580 to 1620, over sixty dramatic works featuring Islamic themes, characters, or settings were produced, alongside more than three thousand texts, which appeared in print dealing with Turks, Islam, Moors, or the Ottomans’.29 Thus, fascinating work has been produced on representations of the figure of the Turk, the Ottoman empire and Islam in early modern English literature, as part of a broader interest in the relationship between Britain and Muslim countries pre-1800.30 An increasing amount of attention is now being paid to the Persian empire. The past decade has seen important work on the representation of Persia in English literature pre-1800, and in Anglo-Persian relations, notably via Jane Grogan’s The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, 1549–1622 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Peter Good’s The East India Company in Persia: Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Eighteenth Century (Bloomsbury, 2022), the work of scholars such as Ladan Niayesh, Kurosh Meshkat, Linda McJannet and Javad Ghatta, and in the PhD theses and forthcoming books of Abid Masood, Sheiba Kian Kaufman and Nedda Mehdizadeh.31 A number of studies have demonstrated the richness and complexity of establishing what Niayesh has 29 Abdulhamit Arvas, ‘The Ottomans in and of Europe’, in England’s Asian Renaissance, ed. by Su Fang Ng and Carmen Nocentelli (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2022), pp. 31–54 (p. 31). 30 See, for example: Bernadette Andrea, Women and Islam in Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Barbour, Before Orientalism; Matthew Birchwood, Staging Islam in England, Drama and Culture, 1640–1685 (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2007); Jonathan Burton, Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama, 1570–1624 (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2005); Dimmock, New Turkes; Vitkus, Turning Turk. 31 Linda McJannet, ‘Bringing in a Persian’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 12 (1999), 236–67; Ladan Niayesh, ‘Shakespeare’s Persians’, Shakespeare 4, 1– 4 (March–October 2008), 127–36; Margaret Meserve, Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); Kurosh Meshkat, ‘The Journey of Master Anthony Jenkinson to Persia, 1562–63’, Journal of Early Modern History, 13 (2009), 209–28; Javad Ghatta, ‘“By Mortus Ali and our Persian gods”: Multiple Persian Identities in Tamburlaine and The Travels of the Three English Brothers ’, Early Theatre, 12.2 (2009), 235–49 and ‘Persian Icons, Shi ‘a Imams: Liminal Figures and Hybrid Persian Identities on the English Stage’, in Early Modern England and Islamic Worlds, ed. by Linda McJannet and Bernadette Andrea (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

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described as the ‘special status and [...] representational instability’ of Persia for the Elizabethans.32 Niayesh and McJannet have produced lists of early modern English plays of Persia which, while not identical, establish a group of around thirty plays that include Persian elements. Their scholarship has established that such plays constitute Persia as having an identity clearly distinguishable from that of the Ottoman empire; ‘Persia both enters the literary imaginary of the early modern period through different channels and produces connotations that are distinct from those of the Ottomans’.33 This book seeks to build on work on the staging of Persia and its people in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England begun and advanced by these scholars. It is concerned with how Persia figured in the English dramatic imagination during this period of change in Anglo-Persian relations and English familiarity with the Persian empire. Chapter 3 of Grogan’s The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, which focuses on plays of Persia, describes how Renaissance drama undertakes ‘the breaking apart of the exemplary conception of the Persian empire, now into “high” and “low”, elite and popular versions, less and less convincing as models for the English empire’.34 The Imagined Empire develops this line of thought to explore how sixteenthand seventeenth-century drama used Persia to look inwards rather than outwards, focusing not on empire and England’s place in the globe, but on domestic society. The central argument of this book is that, in doing so, the early modern stage created an imagined Persia (or, rather, multiple Persias), in which Persian stories and historical figures were repurposed in order to contribute to English political discourses. It seeks to contribute to our understanding of English knowledge about Persia and Persian people in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but argues that such knowledge, as it was manifested in dramatic performance, served not to portray a ‘real’ Persia, whether contemporary or historical, but to construct an imaginary Persian empire, which was used to discuss and reflect English political concerns. Persia undoubtedly became better known by the English 32 Niayesh, ‘Shakespeare’s Persians’, Abstract. 33 Ladan Niayesh, ‘English Literature and the Ottoman and Persian Empires in the

Renaissance’, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature (Oxford University Press, 2022). Date of access 8 February 2023 https://oxfordre.com/literature/display/10.1093/acr efore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-1325. 34 Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 112.

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during the early modern period as travel between Persia and England increased and travel writings about Persia found a popular audience. But the Persia shown on the English stage, even when it drew on contemporary or historical sources, bore little relation to any actual location; rather, Persia served as a convenient set of meanings through which to explore English society and politics. This may explain why the influence of travel accounts in constructing this imaginary Persia, though not insignificant, was limited in comparison with that of earlier sources such as the Bible and the Greeks. In particular, Persia provided for the English a convenient context for thinking about kingship, counsel and the relationship between king and adviser, because of its association with absolute kingship and the consequent threat of tyranny, always a source of anxiety for the English audience.35 In his introduction to his 1995 edition of The Travailes of the Three English Brothers, Anthony Parr describes Persia as ‘not so much Europe’s other as its opposite or foil’.36 Persia in Early Modern English Drama in part supports Parr’s argument that Persia provided ‘a positive alternative to views of Asia either as the home of barbarian hordes or of the hellish doctrine of Islam’ during the early modern period.37 It shows that English dramatists were interested in the notion of Persia as a well-run, militarily successful state that held great riches and was open to English trade. However, it also seeks to modify this view of Persia as a ‘positive alternative’ to dominant views of Asia. Firstly, it contends that Persia’s identity was more complicated and shifting than this allows. What is fascinating about images of Persia in early modern England is precisely

35 Recent years have seen a number of fascinating studies of the role of counsel and advice-giving in relation to early modern European politics and culture. See, for example: Nicole Reinhardt, Voices of Conscience: Royal Confessors and Political Counsel in Seventeenth-Century Spain and France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Jacqueline Rose, The Politics of Counsel in England and Scotland, 1286–1707 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); H. R. Matheson-Pollock, Joanne Paul, and Catherine Fletcher, eds, Queenship and Counsel in Early Modern Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); Ivan Lupi´c, Subjects of Advice: Drama and Counsel from More to Shakespeare (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019); Joanne Paul, Counsel and Command in Early Modern English Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). 36 Anthony Parr, ed., Three Renaissance Travel Plays (Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 11. 37 Parr, Three Renaissance Travel Plays, pp. 10–11.

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their fluidity and complexity, even when this leads to apparent contradiction. Secondly, this book argues that perceptions of Persia changed across the early modern period, partly due to the greater information available in Europe about contemporary Persia, its religion, history and people. In particular, Persia’s binarity with the Ottoman empire was to vary during the seventeenth century, as Safavid Persia became increasingly well known. In this respect, as in others, Persia in Early Modern English Drama demonstrates a direct relationship between the activity and literature of travel and the dramatic productions of stage and court. Despite these changes, however, some dominant images of Persia emerge, cohere and abide, such as its perceived propensity for luxury and vulnerability to tyranny. Thirdly, this book draws attention to the political, ideological and cultural conditions in England that affected the ways in which dramatists made use of Persia and Persian characters. Central to these arguments is the understanding that, despite the emergence of new information about Persia and the Persians via travel writings and histories, English dramatists of this period tended to fall back on well-worn tropes inherited from the Bible and the Greeks about Persia’s identity. These suggest their reliance on a closed knowledge system which was susceptible to both Orientalism and Eurocentrism and which resisted change. That English writers—both dramatists and travellers—perpetuated biblical and classical notions of Persia as given to luxury and tyranny demonstrates the pervasiveness of this knowledge system, even as new information about Persia and other Muslim countries was encountered. Undoubtedly, the arrival of new information about Persia for English audiences changed the meaning of ‘Perse’ into the later sixteenth century and beyond. It is noteworthy that many of the prominent European accounts of Persia published in the seventeenth century, such as Barnabas Brissonius’ De regio Persarum principatu (1606), Pietro Bizzarri’s Rerum Persicarum Historia (1606) and Johannes de Laet’s Persia, seu Regni Persici Status (1633), were written by men who had never been to Persia themselves.38 Whether or not travellers had any first-hand experience of Persia, they all, as Brancaforte remarks, judged Persia by the standards of the West in their observations of Persian places, people and practices.39 When the Austrian Hans Christoph von Teufel wrote of his

38 Brancaforte, Visions of Persia, p. 5. 39 Brancaforte, Visions of Persia, p. 5.

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travels in Persia in 1589, he was not impressed, finding it an infertile and inhospitable place; but in so doing, he recognised the prevailing view that Persia was usually widely praised, possessing a ‘great reputation’ for being fertile and pleasant.40 Persia’s difference and opposition to the Ottoman empire often led to it being distinguished in early modern travel writings in a manner that emphasised its apparently positive qualities. Thomas Herbert, for example, who travelled to Persia in the 1620s, reported that it was home to people who are courteous to strangers, and also suitably strong and warlike: ‘No Nation in the Uniuerse has better nor more daring spirits in fight or exercise, then Persia has’.41 The Italian diplomat Giovanni Botero also suggested that ‘the forme of goverment amongst this nation is not like the gouernment of anie other Mahumetan people: neither is there to be seene the like policie in anie place through the whole east, as amongst the Persians’.42 Anthony Sherley, who travelled to Persia in 1598, indicated that Persia could even provide a political model to be imitated elsewhere: ‘the fashion of his [the Persian shah’s] government differing so much from that which we call barbarousnesse, that it may justly serve for as great an Idea for a Principality, as Platoes Common-wealth did for a Government, of that sort’.43 Information about Persia first reached England via European sources, rather than English ones. European contact with Safavid Persia was earlier than that of England; it was also more consistently sustained during the early modern period, and the difference between the European and English contexts is significant. Often, positive portrayals of Persia tell us as much about the English context as they do about English experiences of Persia itself; writers like Herbert and the Sherleys sought to promote closer Anglo-Persian diplomatic and trade relations, and thus had an interest in emphasising the ease with which the English might approach Persia, both literally and metaphorically. The Persians, governed 40 Brancaforte, Visions of Persia, p. 7, quoting von Teufel in Alfons Gabriel, Die Erforschung Persiens: Die Entwicklung der abendländischen Kenntnis der Geographie Persiens (Wien: A. Holzhausen, 1952), p. 65. 41 Thomas Herbert, A Relation of Some Years Travaile, begvnne Anno 1626. Into Afrique, Asia, Indies (London, 1634; repr. New York: Da Capo Press, 1971), p. 149. 42 Giovanni Botero, An Historicall Description of the Most Famous Kingdomes and Common-weales in the Worlde, trans. by Abraham Hartwell (London, 1603), pp. 210–1. 43 Anthony Sherley, A True Report of Sir A Sherlies Journey (London, 1600), p. 29.

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by a monarch who claimed to be a descendant of ‘Ali himself (i.e., the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law), were portrayed as a submissive people who followed their monarch’s commands without question.44 For Anthony Sherley, Persian territories are ‘better inhabited, better governed, and in better obedience, and affection’ than those of the Ottomans.45 Writing of his travels through Asia twenty-five years later, Herbert also noted that ‘the Turkes be not comparable to the Persian for magnanimity and noblenesse of mind’.46 The superior treatment of Europeans in Persia was naturally a focus for many travellers; thus, we find Manwaring insisting that ‘the country of Persia is far more pleasant for a stranger to live in than the Turks’ country’.47 Parry also mentioned the different treatment that might be expected in each place in terms that accord Persia an Edenic status: ‘we then happily entred the King of Persiaes country, where vpon our first entrance we thought we had bin imparadized, finding our entertainement to be so good, and the maner of the people to be so kinde and curteous (farre differing from the Turkes)’.48 Pinçon, too, emphasised the difference between Turk and Persian and characterised it as intentional on behalf of the Persians: ‘les Persans ont en grande abomination les Turcs, les reputant impurs en leur loy’.49 Persia’s religious identity, characterised by ‘leur loy’, ‘their law’, was an important factor in its characterisation in English sources from this

44 A Journey to Persia: Jean Chardin’s Portrait of a Seventeenth-Century Empire, trans. and ed. by Ronald W. Ferrier (London: Tauris, 1996), p. 77. For the government of Persia under the Safavid dynasty, see Ferrier, pp. 76–96. 45 Anthony Sherley, Sir Antony Sherley His Relation of His Travels into Persia (London, 1613), p. 36. 46 Herbert, A Relation of Some Years Travaile, p. 145. 47 George Manwaring, A True Discourse of Sir Anthony Sherley’ s Travel Into Persia, ed.

by E. Denison Ross in Sir Anthony Sherley and His Persian Adventure [1933] (London: Routledge Curzon, 2005), pp. 216–17. On hospitality as a Persian virtue and its attribution to classical and Safavid Persia, see Sheiba Kian Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe: Persia and Early Modern English Drama’ (PhD thesis, University of California, Irvine, 2021). 48 William Parry, A New and Large Discourse on the Travels of Sir Anthony Sherley Knight , by Sea, and ouer Land, to the Persian Empire (London, 1601), p. 18. 49 Abel Pinçon, Relation d’vn voyage de Perse Faict es Années 1598. & 1599., in Relations Veritables et Cvrievses (Paris, 1651), p. 141 (f2r). In English, ‘the Persians hold the Turks in great abomination, saying that they are impure in their law’, trans. by Denison Ross, Sir Anthony Sherley and His Persian Adventure, p. 163.

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period. In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Persia became increasingly ‘known’ by, and to, the English via European historical texts which gave accounts of the Persian empire, such as Giovanni Tommaso Minadoi’s The History of the Warres Betweene the Turkes and the Persians (1595) and Giovanni Botero’s influential Historicall Description of the Most Famous Kingdomes and Common-weales in the Worlde (translated by Abraham Hartwell in 1603), and general or geographical works, like George Abbot’s A Briefe Description of the Whole Worlde (1599) and Peter Heylyn’s Microcosmus (1621). Accounts of individual travellers to the region also became available in the early seventeenth century, such as William Biddulph’s The Travels of certain Englishmen into Africa, Asia, Troy, Bythinia, Thracia, and to the Blacke Sea (1609) and John Cartwright’s The Preachers Travels (1611). The travels of the Sherley brothers, Thomas, Anthony and Robert, produced a series of travel accounts in the early 1600s, including reports from their companions William Parry and George Manwaring and Antony Sherley’s French steward Abel Pinçon, and Anthony’s own A True Report of Sir A Sherlies Journey (1600) and Sir Anthony Sherley his Relation of his Travels into Persia (1613). Some of these texts, and earlier writings, noted sectarian difference within Islam, which was to become one of the main ways in which English audience would distinguish the Ottoman Turks from the Safavid Persians.50 Persia held a complex religious status in early modern English literature, reflecting what was known of this sectarian difference. Prior to the sixteenth century, Persia had a variety of different religious identities and was controlled by a series of dynasties. Zoroastrianism had become the dominant religion of the Achaemenid empire; Herodotus testifies to the

50 See, for example, Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, The History of Trauayle in the West and East Indies, and Other countreys Lying eyther Way, Towards the fruitfull and ryche Moluccaes. As Muscovia, Persia, Arabia, Syria, Ægypte, Ethiopia, Guinea, China in Cathayo, and Giapan: With a Discourse of the Northwest Passage, trans. by Richard Eden and Richard Willes (London, 1577), p. 380; Manwaring, A true discourse, p. 217; Geffrey Ducket, ‘Further Observations Concerning the State of Persia, Taken in the foresayd fift Voyage into Those partes’, in Richard Hakluyt, The Prinicpal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, ed. by John Masefield, 8 vols (London: Dent, 1927), vol. 2, p. 127.

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important role played by the Magi, who performed the priestly functions of Zoroastrianism.51 Islam was introduced to Iran following the Arab-Islamic conquest in around 650 CE, during the Sassanid empire. During Safavid rule, which began in 1501 with the reign of the first Safavid shah, Isma’il I, Shi’i Islam was introduced and Persia became predominantly a Shi’ite state, while the Ottoman empire remained largely Sunni.52 Shi’ism, the second largest denomination in Islam after Sunnism, is characterised by its attention to the spiritual authority of Muhammad’s family, and especially his daughter Fatima and her husband ‘Ali and their descendants. From the Shi’ite perspective, ‘Ali was the rightful successor of the Prophet Muhammad; the word shi’ism or al-shi’a derives from shi’at ‘Ali or ‘the party of Ali’, and many early references to the differences between Shi’ism and Sunnism identify attention to ‘Ali as a Shi’ite characteristic. The sectarian divide between Shi’ite and Sunni had played a part in the hostilities between the Safavids and the Ottomans during this time.53 Heylyn’s Microcosmus is one of a number of texts which describes the religious difference and its consequences: Their religion is Mahumetanisme, in which they differ from the Turkes about the successours of Mahomet (as shall be shewed anon) and some other circumstances; hence the Turkes reputing them schismaticall, continually persecute them with the fire and the sword.54 51 William W. Malandra, ‘Zoroastrianism i. Historical Review up to the Arab Conquest’, Encyclopaedia Iranica (2005) https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/zoroastrianism-i-his torical-review [Accessed 26 July 2022]. On religion in Achaemenid Persia, see Martin Schwartz, ‘The Religion of Achaemenian Iran’, in The Cambridge History of Iran Volume II: The Median and Achaemenian Periods, ed. by Ilya Gershevitch, pp. 664–97. 52 On Persia under the Safavid dynasty, see Savory, Iran Under the Safavids; Peter Jackson and Laurence Lockhart, eds, The Cambridge History of Iran: Volume 6: The Timurid and Safavid Periods (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), especially ch. 7; Gene R. Garthwaite, The Persians (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), Chapter 6. For the origins of Shi’ism, its emergence as state religion under the Safavids and its significance in Persia/Iran, see Said Amir Arjomand, The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Order, and Societal Change in Shi’ite Iran from the Beginning to 1890 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984), Part II, and I. P. Petrushevsky, Islam in Iran, trans. by Hubert Evans (London: Athlone, 1985), pp. 30–33. For Shi’i Islam in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Moojan Momen, An Introduction to Shi ‘i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi’ism (Oxford: Ronald, 1985), pp. 105–14. 53 Petrushevsky, Islam in Iran, p. 326. 54 Peter Heylyn, Microcosmus, or a Little Description of the Great World (Oxford, 1621),

p. 331.

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In A Briefe Description of the Whole Worlde, George Abbot described the sectarian divide between the two empires as the source of their fighting, which is seen as mutual in origin: ‘the one pursuing the other as heretickes with most deadly hatred. In somuch, that there be in this respect, almost continuall wars between the Turkes, and the Persians’.55 Abbot, in company with other commentators from the period, naturally related this disunity within Islam to that of his own faith, stating that ‘as Papistes and Protestants doe differ in opinion, concerning the same Christ, so doe the Turkes, and Persians about their Mahomet ’.56 As Kenneth Parker has noted, the contestation between Sunni and Shi’a, which was mapped on to the discord between Ottoman and Persian, was perceived during this period as the counterpart of that between Protestant and Catholic.57 When Brancetour was travelling to Persia, this sectarian difference between Turks and Persians was not well known or written about in Europe. Nonetheless, Persia’s status as non-Christian made it an interesting factor in the complex and shifting religious identities of early sixteenth-century Europe. In this respect, Brancetour had something in common with the Sherley brothers, who travelled to Persia at the end of the century: all were condemned by their English monarch as rebels, not least because because of their Catholic leanings which, coupled with their status as long-distance travellers, were instrumental in transforming them into renegades.58 This book argues that the plays of Persia considered here spoke to their own periods in imagining Persia; like travel writing, drama about ‘foreign’ places and peoples tells us as much about the domestic audience as it does about their understanding of the ‘foreign other’. What cultural work did dramatic constructions of Persia undertake, and what ideas did they address? In considering this question, Persia in Early Modern English Drama seeks to reflect further on the epistemologies at work, both for the playwrights and for us as contemporary readers, acknowledging the absence of ‘real’ Persian lives and records in early modern English drama. It also seeks to contribute to an emergent approach to

55 George Abbot, A Briefe Description of the Whole Worlde (1599), sig. B4r. 56 Abbot, A Briefe Description of the Whole Worlde, sig. B4r. 57 Kenneth Parker, ed., Early Modern Tales of Orient: A Critical Anthology (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 4. 58 Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (London: Constable, 1984), pp. 336–37.

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this subject which recognises the ways in which the ancient east has been decentred from our own understanding of the early modern world. In her introduction to a collection of essays, Beyond Greece and Rome: Reading the Ancient Near East in Early Modern Europe, Jane Grogan describes what can be made invisible as a consequence of centring the classical world in Greece and Rome, such as ‘the many mediations of the ancient near east through favoured classical texts, or the many ways in which the early moderns sought out such knowledge, often to satisfy present needs, be they cultural, political, social, geographical, or economic’.59 Grogan draws our attention to Jyotsna G. Singh’s call that we recognise, that, both as a literary movement and as a historical period, the range of the ‘Renaissance’ was ‘temporal—going back to antiquity—as well as spatial and geographical, stretching across the globe’.60 As Grogan argues, The European Renaissance, then, is not so very European at all, even in its classicism. […] [W]e must, like the early moderns, attend to the particular appeal of the ancient near east to early modern Europe under the sign of both classics and early modern culture. And secondly, as with all acts or instances of classical reception, we must acknowledge that the traffic is two-way and provisional, and that it takes many different forms: it is not just that later readers ‘received’ earlier texts and emulated them, but that early modern readings of classical texts, shaped as they were by early modern needs and contexts, reshaped classical writings and artefacts of the ancient near east in its own terms for its own—and later—readers.61

It is this reshaping of classical—and contemporary—Persia in their own terms that early modern dramatists undertake in their plays of Persia.

Tudor Plays of Persia The first section of this book covers plays from the period 1530 to 1588, the earliest years of Anglo-Persian trade and diplomatic relations. 59 Jane Grogan, ‘Introduction: Beyond Greece and Rome’, in Beyond Greece and Rome:

Reading the Ancient Near East in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), p. 1. 60 Jyotsna G. Singh, ‘Introduction: The Global Renaissance’, in A Companion to the Global Renaissance (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009; second edn, 2021), p. 8, quoted in Grogan, ‘Introduction: Beyond Greece and Rome’, p. 2. 61 Jane Grogan, ‘Introduction: Beyond Greece and Rome’, pp. 2–3.

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The opening chapter considers the anonymous interlude Godly Queene Hester, written and first performed in 1530, during Henry’s reign, and printed in 1561, in the early years of Elizabeth’s. Hester has been read in the Henrician context as a version of Katharine of Aragon, with the biblical Esther’s defence of the Jews representing Katharine’s solidarity with fellow Catholics, and in the Elizabethan context as a version of the new queen, with Elizabeth’s defence of Protestantism legitimated through Esther’s prevention of a massacre of the Jews under King Ahasuerus or Xerxes I of Persia. Using her body as a political tool and ascribing her strength to her masculine attributes, the stage Hester is transformed during the play from a meek, silent and biddable young woman into a forceful, effective and vociferous ‘masculine’ queen. By the end of the play, she is not only advising ‘Assuerus’, but writing his policy and acting as a force for good in international politics. In Godly Queene Hester, as with many plays of Persia across the early modern period, Persia itself does not seem immediately relevant, in that it is seemingly incidental to the narrative of the text, and in consequence, the Persian context of this dramatic entertainment has not been considered. Reading this interlude as a play of Persia, however, helps to develop our understanding of the text in its contemporary political context and to establish the significance of Persia as a dramatic setting, even at this early stage in the history of early modern performance. Drawing on Persia’s capacity to be a place both known and unknown to the English audience, and on Persia’s largely benign portrayal in the Bible, Godly Queene Hester establishes Persia as a convenient situation for reimagining biblical figures with relevance for the contemporary context. Chapter 3 considers two plays, contemporary with the printing of Godly Queene Hester, which took Achaemenid kings as their subject matter: Kyng Daryus, published anonymously in 1565, and Thomas Preston’s Cambises, first printed in 1569 but most likely first performed around 1560. Darius and Cambyses are figures familiar to the Elizabethan audience both from classical sources and the Bible. Like Godly Queene Hester, these plays reconstruct Persian political leaders in ways that create points of connection to contemporary English politics, drawing both on classical Greek sources, such as Herodotus and Xenophon, and on English texts that served as intermediaries to the Greeks. These entertainments, too, spoke directly to Elizabeth’s own situation by advocating a Protestant—and female—leadership for the country and offering a speculum

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principis to reflect Elizabeth’s own state. In placing the queen as a counsellor and itself offering a form of counsel to Elizabeth, Godly Queene Hester explored the role of counsel in governance and particularly in monarchy. In Daryus and Cambises, too, classical Persia provides an opportunity to stage the kind of example to the court advocated in the 1559 Mirror for Magistrates, which stated that rulers should learn how to behave wisely and morally by looking into the mirrors provided for them by drama and poetry. The two plays offer two very different models of kingship: an idealised king in Daryus and a threatening tyrant in Cambises. Through Cambises in particular, then, this chapter also examines the figure of lustful tyrant which was to become a familiar element of the ‘raging Turk’ on the early modern stage, and articulates the fear of tyranny when out of control. Chapter 4 offers new readings of three plays of Persia from the 1570s and 1580s: Richard Farrant’s The Warres of Cyrus (1576–80) and Tamburlaine the Great Parts 1 and 2 by Christopher Marlowe (1587– 8). If Godly Queene Hester established Persia’s benign status as a context for offering examples to the queen, and Daryus and Cambises explored its associations with absolute kingship and tyranny, the subjects of Chapter 4 focused on another stereotype of Persian-ness in the early modern period: wealth. The focus on Persia’s richness, and especially its association with gold, which dominates both Cyrus and the Tamburlaine plays, reflects the nascent influence of travel writing and histories on English plays of Persia, as the lucrative potential trade networks that Persia offered became the focus on contemporary writings about the Persian empire. Though empire is an important focus of the plays considered here, their interest in questions relevant to domestic politics and the relationship between a monarch and his people are equally relevant, though less frequently considered. In both The Warres and the Tamburlaine plays, moreover, the attitude of the leader to riches dramatically represents the relationship between the monarch and his subjects in ways which may have resonated with early modern English audiences. The three plays use Persia to explore different ideas about kingship and in doing so dramatise different ideas about Persia, reflecting the shifting balances of Anglo-Persian relations and the growing availability of information about Persia, which form an important background to reading the texts in their Persian contexts. Broadly speaking, we can observe a gradual shift from an optimistic belief in the later 1570s that Persia might represent access to wealth and power

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for England to a growing disillusionment of that hope in the 1580s, a shift which is reflected in the plays of Persia from this period.

Plays of Persia in the Stuart Period and the Inter-Regnum Following the first trade and diplomatic envoys from Europe to Persia in the late sixteenth century, the early seventeenth century saw a considerable increase in travel between England and Persia, and consequently in writings about such travel. Although plays of Persia from the early seventeenth century portrayed Persian people and Persia itself with an unprecedented level of interest and detail, biblical and classical images of ancient Persia continued to resonate with English audiences. English attitudes to Persia changed during the reign of James VI and I, as James’ attitude was relatively pro-Persian compared to that of Elizabeth.62 English audiences also encountered for the first time Shah ‘Abb¯as I, who governed Persia from 1587 to 1629 CE; this most famous and successful of Persian shahs from this period was to become a familiar figure on the English stage in the seventeenth century. As conflicts between the Safavid Persians and the Ottomans escalated, Persia became a conveniently anti-Ottoman potential ally, and ‘Abb¯as himself seemed not only to be a possible friend for England, but even a potential convert to Christianity.63 Travellers to Persia also began to explore potential trade routes, and plays about Persia drew on material that was sometimes propagandistic in its efforts to portray Persia as a place that was friendly and open to English trade. The main subject of Chapter 5 is a prime example of these efforts. The Travailes of the Three English Brothers (1607) by John Day, William Rowley and George Wilkins, sought to focus attention on English encounters with Persia in the present day and to re-imagine England’s relationship with Persia in the immediate future, by staging the experiences of three real-life travellers from England to Persia and the Ottoman empire. The play constructs contemporary Persia for the English imagination, ultimately defeating its own efforts to imagine a role for a powerful England in the Muslim East. This chapter also considers the simultaneous

62 Dimmock, New Turkes, p. 199. 63 Chloë Houston, ‘“Thou Glorious kingdome, thou chiefe of Empires”: Persia in Early

Seventeenth-Century Travel Literature’, Studies in Travel Writing, 13 (2009), 141–52.

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revival of interest in classical Persia via its readings of William Alexander’s Monarchicke Tragedies (1603–1607) and Samuel Daniel’s Philotas (1604), plays which demonstrate that classical Persia continued to form a convenient backdrop for playwrights to convey concerns about kingship and governance in the early years of the 1600s, just as it had in the previous century. Chapter 6 examines a play which creates a hybrid Persia in which both contemporary and classical features coalesce. William Cartwright’s The Royall Slave (1636), like The Travailes of the Three English Brothers, draws much of its material from real-life journeys from England to Persia, and especially those John Cartwright’s The Preachers’ Travels (1611), and of the Dodmore Cotton embassy, recounted in Thomas Herbert’s A Relation of Some Yeares Travail, first printed in 1634. Cartwright’s play typifies the ‘self-conscious detachment from contemporary Persia and an ahistorical idealization of its mythic and mystic past’ that Sheiba Kaufman has recently associated with plays of Persia from this period.64 Cartwright, like earlier playwrights, uses Persia as a mean to explore notions of kingship, governance and counsel. As contemporary travel writing began to display both Abb¯as and contemporary Persia in an increasingly ambiguous, even negative, light, the more familiar setting of Achaemenid Persia provided a useful physical and temporal distance both from contemporary Persia and from contemporary England. Both Robert Baron and John Denham, the subjects of the Chapter 7, chose to engage directly with contemporary Persia and more fully to negotiate its complex ambiguities in their own plays of Persia, although they nonetheless fall back on classical Persia in their dramatic imagining of the Persian empire. In the political discourse of the mid-seventeenth century, Persia served as an example of an absolute monarchy, either to demonstrate the idea that power comes from divine rather than popular authority, or to show the necessity of supporting good people against an oppressive king, drawing on images of classical Persia to do so. Chapter 7 reads two plays which were influenced by classical and contemporary literature, melding elements of classical and contemporary Persia to critique the role of an absolute monarch underpinned by a belief in the sanctity of kingship. Both John Denham’s The Sophy (1642) and Robert Baron’s Mirza (1655) participate in a discourse on the role and functions of

64 Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’, p. 132.

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counsel in relation to monarchy, considering, like much political literature of the time, the origins of power and the relationship between a monarch and his people, and harking back to an idealised ‘golden age’ image of Persia which, it is suggested, may be brought back to life through the right actions.

Restoration Plays of Persia In the last three decades, scholars have examined the complicated relationship between power, politics and the stage in Restoration England. The restoration of the monarchy; allegations of a Catholic conspiracy to assassinate the king; the prospect of war with France; the Exclusion Crisis, the Popish Plot; and eventually the Glorious Revolution: literary historians have explored the ways in which the drama of the period engaged with a series of debates that dominated the political scene during a time when, in Susan J. Owen’s words, ‘drama became political’ and ‘politics seemed theatrical’.65 The third section of this book will look at how plays of Persia entered into these debates and specifically those surrounding the achievement, maintenance and transmission of political power. Chapter 8 thus continues this book’s interest in the divine sanction of kingship and the legitimacy of monarchical rule. In the early years of the Restoration, many playwrights were—unsurprisingly—actively promoting the divine right of kings, seeking to bring to mind a traditional notion of the origins of monarchical power in order to shore up Charles II’s right to the English throne. But others, like Elkanah Settle, the subject of this chapter, were interested in considering the divine right of kings with greater scepticism and ambivalence. Settle’s 1667 play, Cambyses, returns our focus to Achaemenid Persia, centring on the usurpation of the Persian king Cambyses II, the son of Cyrus the Great. The play contributed to the process of reconstituting and refashioning of ideas about monarchy which took place following its restoration: a process of re-evaluation in which the very foundations of kingship, and the means by which it could be passed on, were open to debate. This chapter also considers how Settle’s play engages with ideas about religious and political conversion in order to construct an association between political agency and religious identity that had particular resonance in the 1660s, as the question of Charles’ 65 Susan J. Owen, Restoration Theatre and Crisis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996; repr. 2003), p. 3.

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future heir raised the possibility of a Catholic on the English throne. Achaemenid Persia formed a suitable background against which to explore these ideas, due to its reputation both as a powerful empire and as one which had struggled with the issue of succession. The drama of the 1670s and 1680s continued to engage closely with the changing political context of the age, as the next chapter shows. Chapter 9 focuses on another classical ruler of Persia, from a later period: Alexander III of Macedon, or Alexander the Great, who conquered Persia and overthrew Darius III, the last of the Achaemenid kings.66 The Rival Queens uses Persia, and in particular its status as an empire ruled by a tyrant, in different ways to Cambyses. Persian identity is more central to The Rival Queens than it was to Settle’s heroic tragedy; Lee’s Persia figures as a dying empire, given to luxury and effeminacy, representing a dangerous temptation for Alexander, who allows himself to adopt a Persian identity. In Lee’s play, as in Settle’s, Persia functions as a convenient setting for a drama concerned with the problems of tyranny and the limits of royal authority; The Rival Queens offers a contribution to contemporary debates on both kingship and views of masculinity. This chapter argues that the similarities between the courts and behaviours of Alexander the Great in the play and Charles II at the time when it was written and performed suggest a more direct political context for this play of Persia than has previously been recognised, as Persia’s particular associations with luxury, tyranny and effeminacy again made it a useful context for exploring such questions on the Restoration stage. Chapter 10 of The Imagined Empire brings together two late seventeenth-century plays of Persia which are rarely read in conjunction: John Crowne’s Darius, King of Persia (1688) and Colley Cibber’s Xerxes (1699), considering their political contexts in the aftermath of the Exclusion Crisis of 1681, James II’s accession to the throne in 1685, and his subsequent loss of control over his kingdoms by 1690. During this period of ‘intense topicality’ in English drama,67 Persia continued to provide a useful background for setting plays concerning political intrigue; these two plays about Achaemenid Persia posed questions concerning kingship (and especially the question of divine sanction for rule), tyranny,

66 Bill Yenne, Alexander the Great: Lessons from History’s Undefeated General (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 67 Owen, Restoration Theatre and Crisis, p. 109.

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rebellion and the succession of power. Persia was a useful backdrop for exploring these questions because, as we have seen, audiences would have been familiar with its connotations of tyranny, luxury, effeminacy and the difficulty of peaceful succession. Like Cambyses and The Rival Queens, Darius and Xerxes ask what happens when an apparently divinely ordained monarch fails to perform his duties adequately. In answering this question, they consider what constitutes tyranny, and how power is wielded and handed on by such a king. They examine the effects of tyrannical kingship on the citizenry, including the prospect of rebellion and its legitimacy. Early modern English plays which centre on Achaemenid kings constitute ‘clear evidence of a continuing interest in the early Persian Empire’.68 Parvin Loloi suggests that this may be due to the fact that in the years when the English were pursuing their own desires to build a great empire, their playwrights ‘often have found in an earlier empire important and attractive, though often prejudiced, materials for presentation on the stage’.69 While the function of Persia as a model of empire is clearly present, this chapter has shown that Achaemenid Persia was also particularly useful to dramatists interested in exploring questions relating to domestic kingship. By the end of the period covered by this book, Persia is entirely unrecognisable from the benign, rather featureless place with which we began in Godly Queene Hester. Through the lens of English drama, Persia seemingly implodes into a state characterised by Cibber by its total lack of moral authority, charting a descent into decadence and debauchery. This descent, of course, tells us much more about the state of England in the later seventeenth century than it does of Persia. Early modern plays of Persia held up a mirror of their own political climate to English audiences, depicting an imaginary empire where English political concerns might be played out.

68 Parvin Loloi, ‘Portraits of the Achaemenid Kings in English Drama: SixteenthEighteenth Centuries’, in The World of Achaemenid Persia: History, Art and Society in Iran and the Ancient Near East, ed. by John Curtis and St John Simpson (London: Tauris, 2010), pp. 33–40 (p. 39). 69 Loloi, ‘Portraits of the Achaemenid Kings’, p. 39.

CHAPTER 2

‘In This Noble Region’: Politics and Counsel in The Godly Queene Hester (Anonymous, c. 1530)

Introduction The Old Testament records that the Jewish people lived for many years in lands that became part of the Persian empire, following the conquering of Babylon by Cyrus the Great in 539 BCE.1 The books of the Old Testament which describe the experiences of the people of Israel under Persian rule note Cyrus’ comparatively lenient attitude towards them; in granting freedom to subjugated nations in Babylon, Cyrus had enabled the return of Jewish exiles to rebuild the temple in Judah and had empowered Ezra and Nehemiah to govern Jerusalem and restore its walls, and to enforce the Torah.2 The prophecy of Daniel regarding the four worldly empires, in which Persia, by conquering Babylon, was identified with the second

1 For Cyrus’ conquering of Babylon, see Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, trans. by Peter T. Daniels (Winona Lake: Eisenbraums, 2002), p. 42. 2 Etienne Nodet, A Search for the Origins of Judaism: From Joshua to the Mishnah (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), p. 25. See also Edwin M. Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1990), pp. 89–90.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Houston, Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699, New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22618-2_2

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kingdom of silver, gave the Persian empire an important role in the apocalyptic Christian tradition.3 Persian rule marked an improvement in the conditions and experiences of the Jewish people, although, as Peter R. Ackroyd notes, ‘it would be a mistake to oversimplify the changes. The Persians had conquered; they were intent on ruling, and they could be as ruthless against their opponents as their predecessors’.4 The story with which this chapter is concerned comes from the Book of Esther, thought to date from the fourth century BCE, during this period of Persian rule over the Jewish people.5 There are two Esther stories in the Bible: the canonical Hebrew version in the Book of Esther and the deuterocanonical version contained in the Apocrypha. Although sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers used both stories, according to their purpose, in this chapter we will focus on the Hebrew version, which was the main source for a Tudor interlude, the anonymous The Godly Queene Hester (c. 1530). The events of the Book of Esther take place in Susa, a city located in what is now western Iran, which was a residence of Achaemenid kings of Persia. The story begins with banquets held by King Ahasuerus, most usually identified as Xerxes I, the son of Darius I.6 Ahasuerus commands his wife, Vashti, to appear at the table so that his companions can admire her. When she refuses, Ahasuerus is advised to cast Vashti off because of the risk that she will prove a bad example to other women; he accordingly banishes his queen and begins to look for a new wife. Amongst the candidates brought to the royal harem is Esther, a young Jewish orphan in the care of Mordechai, her cousin. Mordechai tells Esther not to reveal that she is Jewish, a command which she follows even when, after a year of preparation, she is chosen by Ahasuerus to be his bride. After their marriage, Esther is able to prevent a plot to assassinate the king, using 3 See Jane Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, 1549–1622 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 14–15. 4 Peter R. Ackroyd, Israel Under Babylon and Persia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 163. 5 Yamauchi discusses the question of dating the Book of Esther in Persia and the Bible, pp. 226–8. 6 See Robert J. Littman, ‘The Religious Policy of Xerxes and the “Book of Esther”’,

The Jewish Quarterly Review, 65.3 (1975), 145–48. Yamauchi explains that ‘Ahasuerus’ is the Hebrew form of ‘Xerxes’ in Persia and the Bible, p. 187. Scholars have also noted that the presentation of Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther is in keeping with Herodotus’ descriptions of Xerxes; see C. A. Moore, ‘Archaeology and the Book of Esther’, Biblical Archaeologist, 38 (1975), 62–79 (69).

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information given to her by Mordechai, who has overheard it at the palace gates. Although he is loyal to the king, Mordechai refuses to bow down to the king’s chief advisor, Haman. In revenge, Haman encourages the king to issue an order for the execution of the Jewish people, who do not follow Persian laws, because their ‘laws are different from those of every other people’ (3:8). The date for the mass execution is fixed for twelve months later; Ahasuerus arranges for this decree to be published, still unaware of the ethnic and religious identity of his new wife. On learning of the order, Mordechai mourns at the palace gates and encourages Esther to plead with the king to save her people. Esther is initially hesitant, explaining that anyone who comes before the king without being summoned risks death, but Mordechai convinces her that her life, and the lives of all Jews in Persia, are at stake, emphasising her own Jewish identity: ‘Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews’.7 After fasting in preparation, Esther approaches Ahasuerus, who welcomes her and says he will grant any request she cares to make, including giving her half of his kingdom. In return, she asks him and Haman to attend a banquet with her the following day. At this banquet, Ahasuerus again offers the queen anything she wishes, and Esther replies by inviting both men to a second banquet. Haman, who is delighted to think that he has won the new queen’s approval, resolves to have Mordechai executed and orders a set of gallows to be constructed in order for him to be hanged. Meanwhile, Ahasuerus, reading in the annals of Mordechai’s role in saving him from the assassination plot, decides to give Mordechai a prize for his loyalty. He asks Haman for advice about how best to reward a man whom the king has decided to honour. Haman, thinking that he is the one about to be honoured, suggests that the man should parade through the city on the king’s own horse. On discovering that Ahasuerus intends this honour for Mordechai, Haman is obliged to lead his enemy, dressed in regal robes, through the streets on horseback. At the next banquet, the king again offers to grant any of Esther’s requests. She asks for her life and for the lives of her people, who are going ‘to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated’ (7:4). When Ahasuerus asks by whom, Esther indicates Haman. The king leaves the room in anger, and Haman throws himself on Esther’s mercy. Returning 7 The Book of Esther, Book 4, Chapter 13, King James Version. All further references will be given in parentheses and will be from the KJV unless otherwise stated.

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to find his advisor prostrate on his queen’s couch, Ahasuerus commands that Haman be put to death, and he is hanged on the gallows he had built for Mordechai. The king gives Haman’s property to his queen, and she bestows it upon her cousin. However, Ahasuerus is powerless to withdraw his command that all Jewish people should be put to death, as even the king cannot revoke a royal edict. Esther, with Mordechai’s help, encourages the king to order that Jews are permitted to defend themselves against anyone who tries to harm them. When the date of the proposed slaughter arrives, Jews throughout Persia slay their would-be killers: on the first day, hundreds are killed (including Haman’s ten sons, whose bodies are displayed on the same gallows). Esther asks Ahasuerus to permit a second day of retaliation, and on this day, seventy-five thousand Persians are killed by the Jewish people. These two days, at Mordechai’s encouragement, are authorised by Esther to be kept as a holiday (Purim), to venerate the Jews’ escape from their enemies and the transformation of expected grief into relief and happiness. At the end of the story, Esther is in a position of power and security, and Mordechai is the king’s most important advisor. The potential oppression and destruction of the Jewish community under Persian rule are thus prevented by the personal qualities and actions of Esther, and the solidarity of that community. In consequence, Esther, as we shall see later in this chapter, appealed to sixteenth-century readers as a model of virtue and leadership.8 The Persia represented in the Book of Esther can be seen as both hostile towards and tolerant of the Jewish people. On the one hand, Persia subjugates the Jews, coming close to mass slaughter, and constitutes a dangerous environment in which Esther must keep her ethnic and religious identity secret from the king. Both Persia and its king are seen to be given to luxury, with extended feasting and drinking. The luxury of the court is in keeping with its devotion to pleasure: ‘And the drinking was according to the law; none did compel: for so the king had appointed to all the officers of his house, that they should do according to every man’s pleasure’ (1:8). Ahasuerus’ drinking, tendency to anger, and capacity to be swayed by poor advice are notable features of his characterisation. There is little detail about Persia itself, other than the size of its empire and extravagance of its court (this lack of specificity was to

8 On this see Saralyn Ellen Summer, ‘“Like Another Esther”: Literary Representations of Esther in Early Modern England’ (PhD thesis, Georgia State University, 2005).

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be a common factor in later plays of Persia, as we shall see). Nonetheless, despite these apparently negative factors in its representation, Persia is made into a safe place for the Jewish people directly through the actions of Esther and Mordecai, and Esther gains power and wealth which she can pass on to her cousin and their descendants. Esther’s behaviour and her personal qualities—self-control, wisdom, piety—transform Persia from a potentially threatening to a benign environment for the Jewish people in which a Jewish queen is empowered and they are liberated from the threat of physical harm, themselves becoming aggressors to their enemies. Godly Queene Hester is thought to date from 1529 to 1530,9 placing it at the earliest point of what might be considered Reformation drama, which is usually dated from around 1530.10 This means that it was likely to have been written and first performed soon after William Tyndale’s translation of the Bible into the English vernacular reached England in 1526.11 Tyndale’s translation, however, was not complete, and his version of the Old Testament did not include the Book of Esther. The early years of the sixteenth century, the century of the Latin Bible, saw the printing of many editions of the Bible in Latin; from 1501 to 1517, 43 editions were printed.12 The Book of Esther, then, when it was read at all, would most often have been read in Latin and would not have been available to an exclusively English-reading audience. In general, the sixteenth century saw renewed interest in reading Hebraic texts and the books of the Old Testament, as ‘biblical interpretation played a formative role in the development of early modern political thought’.13 Recent scholarship on biblical exegesis during this period has demonstrated that 9 W. W. Greg, A New Enterlude of Godly Queene Hester. Materials for the Study of the Old English Drama, ed. by W. W. Greg, vol. 5 (Louvain: Uystpruyst, 1904; repr. 1963), vii–x. 10 Paul Whitfield White, ‘The Bible as Play in Reformation England’, in The Cambridge History of British Theatre, Volume I: Origins to 1660, ed. by Jane Milling and Peter Thomson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 87–115 (p. 87). 11 David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 134. 12 John M. Lenhart, ‘Protestant Latin Bibles of the Reformation from 1520–1570: A Bibliographical Account’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 8.4, (1946), 416–32 (416). 13 Kim Ian Parker, ‘“A King Like Other Nations”: Political Theory and the Hebrew Republic in the Early Modern Age’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England, c. 1530–1700, ed. by Kevin Killeen, Helen Smith, and Rachel Willie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 384–96 (p. 385).

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early modern readers of the books of the Old Testament understood them as bearing a direct relevance to their own times, as Kevin Killeen has argued: ‘The Bible demanded of early modern readers a sense of omnipresent history, in which God speaks to the political moment via a stock of exemplary prefigurations, which interpreters must map onto their own immediate circumstances’.14 Early Tudor drama was involved in this process of interpreting biblical narrative for contemporary circumstances. It has long been established that such plays were actively engaged in both religious and political debate, drawing on the rich tradition of religious theatre that sixteenth-century England inherited.15 Much of the drama of this period, including interludes like Godly Queene Hester, has been shown to have political interests.16 In some cases, these interests have specific targets: some interludes have been read as having ‘aimed their didacticism at personal behaviour and specific abuses of power’.17 It has also been argued that interludes’ relationship to contemporary politics is a complex one, in which the plays do not simply transmit propaganda from patron to audience but constitute ‘moves or stages in a complex negotiation for power, or for influence over its use’.18 Tudor interludes’ functions as interpreters of biblical narrative and as political texts are clearly related; they made use of biblical narratives in presenting to their audiences stories which had an application to their own situations and societies. Godly Queene Hester has been cited by Peter Happé as an example of a play in which ‘political and sectarian interests 14 Kevin Killeen, ‘Chastising with Scorpions: Reading the Old Testament in Early Modern England’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 73.3 (2010), 491–506. 15 See, for example, David Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics: A Critical Approach to Topical Meaning (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968); Paul Whitfield White, Theatre and Reformation: Protestantism, Patronage and Playing in Tudor England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); White, ‘The Bible as play in Reformation England’, p. 87; Murray Roston, Biblical Drama in England: From the Middle Ages to the Present Day (London: Faber and Faber, 1968), Chapters One and Two. 16 Peter Happé and Wim Hüsken, ‘Introduction’, Interludes and Early Modern Society: Studies in Gender, Power and Theatricality, ed. by Peter Happé and Wim Hüsken (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), p. 9. See also Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics; Suzanne R. Westfall, Patrons and Performance: Early Tudor Household Revels (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 11, p. 207. 17 Kent Cartwright, Theatre and Humanism: English Drama in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 25. 18 Greg Walker, The Politics of Performance in Early Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 69.

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played their part in the design’, as dramatists applied a biblical narrative to contemporary society (Happé is referring to the suggestion that characters in Godly Queene Hester represent people at Henry VIII’s court, a reading which will be discussed later). In doing so, Godly Queene Hester was not unique, but one of a number of Tudor interludes which served ‘as polemical weapons in which a didactic mode is significant and they are determined by ideological intentions’ and demonstrated ‘a growing lay interest in the use of biblical characters and narratives’.19 Contemporaries of the author of Godly Queene Hester, such as John Bale, who converted to Protestantism in the 1530s, employed biblical narratives and references to support their patrons’ efforts at reform. Bale, who wrote a large number of entertainments in the 1530s, only five of which survive, produced drama which was ‘saturated with biblical references’ and promoted the reform measures implemented by Cromwell in the second half of the decade.20 A number of scholars have suggested that later examples of Reformation drama, such as the anonymous The History of Jacob and Esau, which was registered with the Stationers’ Company in 1557, had a political as well as a polemical dimension; David Bevington has read Jacob and Esauas ‘dangerously sanction[ing] any rebellion when divine command may be taken to oversway established order’.21 During the Reformation, Sarah Carpenter has shown, playwrights began ‘to use the Bible in different and sometimes newly provocative theatrical ways’.22 Godly Queene Hester, too, used the biblical story of Esther in ways which were both different and provocative, and particularly in relationship to its political dimension. Hester, at least in its later printed version, offered its reworking of the biblical story as an education for its female audience. The verses printed on the title page of the 1561 edition commend Hester to a female readership as an exemplar of virtuous female behaviour: Com nere vertuous matrons & womenkind 19 Peter Happé, ‘Introduction’, Staging Scripture: Biblical Drama, 1350–1600, ed. by Peter Happé and Wim Hüsken (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 4–5. 20 White, ‘The Bible as play in Reformation England’, p. 87. 21 Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics, p. 112; White, ‘The Bible as play in

Reformation England’, p. 102, p. 104. 22 Sarah Carpenter, ‘Performing the Scriptures: Biblical Drama After the Reformation’, in Staging Scripture, ed. Happé and Hüsken, pp. 12–38 (p. 13).

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Here may ye learne of Hesters duty, In all comlines of vertue you shal finde How to behave yourselves in humilitie.23

The character of Esther clearly captivated the early modern imagination as a type of female virtue and leadership; perhaps, in the later sixteenth century, the Esther narrative provided a useful opportunity for exploring the prospect and consequences of female power, in keeping with the move during the Tudor period to more woman-friendly models of governance.24 In Hester, both in its original context in the earlier sixteenth century and in the 1561 context, the Esther story is employed in the context of the current political atmosphere. Although scholars have paid attention to the political dimension of this interlude, more can be done to further our understanding of its relationship to both its 1530s and 1560s contexts, and to appreciate the significance of Persia as the setting for this reworking of the Esther narrative. Comparatively, little was known about contemporary Persia in the late medieval period or indeed throughout the medieval period; ‘Iran did not loom particularly large in the medieval Western imagination’, just as the Islamic world ‘did not rate western Europe very highly, if indeed they thought about that part of the world at all’.25 Information on ancient Persia was available from the Greek sources as well as from the Bible, so Achaemenid Persia was not an unknown quantity in the early sixteenth century. But prior to the increase of European travel to Persia in the mid- and later sixteenth century, Persia itself does not seem to have been especially interesting or important to writers such as the author of Godly 23 Anonymous, A newe enterlude drawen oute of the holy scripture of godly queene Hester verye necessary newly made and imprinted, this present yere. M.D.LXI (London, 1561), A1. All further references will be to this edition and will be given in parentheses. 24 Allyna E. Ward, Women and Tudor Tragedy: Feminizing Counsel and Representing Gender (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013), p. 4. 25 Robert Bartlett, ‘Ancient Iran in the imagination of the Medieval West’, in Perceptions of Iran: History, Myths and Nationalism from Medieval Persia to the Islamic Republic, ed. by Ali M. Ansari (London: Tauris, 2014), p. 37; David Morgan, ‘Persian Perceptions of Mongols and Europeans ’, in Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting and Reflecting on the Encounters Between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era, ed. by Stuart B. Schwartz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; repr. 1996), p. 210. Jane Grogan also notes that by 1561 Queen Elizabeth I ‘had little current information to go on’ about Persia, although she did have access to classical literature and the Bible; Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 1.

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Queene Hester, which, like the Book of Esther, contains little detail about Persia itself or about its people. Godly Queene Hester is a retelling of a biblical story involving Persia, in which, as with many plays of Persia across the early modern period, Persia itself does not seem immediately relevant, in that it is seemingly incidental to the narrative of the text. In consequence, the Persian context of Godly Queene Hester has not been considered. Reading this interlude as a play of Persia, however, helps to develop our understanding of the text in its contemporary political context and to establish the significance of Persia as a dramatic setting, even at this early stage in the history of early modern performance. Godly Queene Hester A newe enterlude drawen oute of the holy scripture of godly queene Hester was first printed in London by William Pickerynge and Thomas Hackett in 1561.26 The author is unknown; W. W. Greg, the text’s twentiethcentury editor, discusses John Skelton and William Roy as possible candidates.27 While Godly Queene Hester has not received a great amount of critical attention, a number of articles in the past two decades, and the inclusion of the text in Greg Walker’s Medieval Drama (2000), have demonstrated the value of paying attention to this little-known interlude in its contemporary theatrical and political contexts.28 Interludes were short dramatic performances which were presented in Tudor halls as an entertainment, possibly between the courses of a meal or during some other form of performance.29 They were popular in the late 1500s,

26 Greg, A New Enterlude of Godly Queene Hester, vii–x. 27 Greg, A New Enterlude of Godly Queene Hester, xi. C. C. Stopes suggests that the

author may be William Hunnis, the author of Jacob and Esau, in William Hunnis and the Revels of the Chapel Royal: A study of his period and the influences which affected Shakespeare (Louvain: Uystpruyst, 1910; repr. Vaduz: Kraus, 1963), pp. 263–4, but her assertion is conjectural. 28 See, for example, Mike Pincombe, ‘Comic Treatment of Tragic Character in Godly Queen Hester’, in Interludes and Early Modern Society, pp. 95–116; Janette Dillon, ‘Powerful Obedience: Godly Queen Hester and Katherine of Aragon’, in Interludes and Early Modern Society, pp. 117–39. 29 For an introduction to the form, see Glynne Wickham, English Moral Interludes (London: J. M. Dent, 1976), v–xv. On the difficulty of defining it, see Nick Davis, ‘Allusions to Medieval Drama in Britain (4): Interludes’, Medieval English Theatre, 6.1 (1984), 61–91.

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and throughout the following century, and, although only a fairly small number survive in print today, it is evident that they held ‘a central position in sixteenth-century drama’.30 Godly Queene Hester, like other Tudor interludes, combines religious and secular subject matter, including allegorical figures such as Adulation, Ambition and Pryde alongside characters from the biblical Book of Esther. The drama begins with Assuerus (Ahasuerus) asking his counsellors ‘Which is most worthy honoure [for a king] to attayne’ (l. 16). After a short debate, Assuerus agrees with one counsellor, Aman (Haman), that justice is the greatest virtue for a prince, because it ‘maintaineth ye common weale’ (l. 89). Impressed with Aman, the king makes him his Chancellor, advising him to preserve justice and truth, ‘Or to your destruction, we shall you soone remoue’ (l. 112). The narrative of the interlude is thus cast within this framework of a meditation upon the virtues proper to kingship, the value of counsel and the importance of living according to the principles that one espouses publicly, that is, ‘a typical Renaissance débat with the question formally proposed and discussed, and the decision rendered’.31 This is markedly different from the Book of Esther, where the narrative begins during a series of lavish banquets with the entire palace in attendance and ‘royal wine in abundance’ (1.7). Consequently, the differences between the interlude and its biblical source emphasise Godly Queene Hester’s concern with questions of ‘effective governance and the qualities necessary to ensure its success’.32 Unlike Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther, of whom we are told that he ‘had appointed to all the officers of his house, that they should do according to every man’s pleasure’ (1.8), Assuerus is a type of a thoughtful king, concerned for the stability of his kingdom, who seeks out and attends to counsel. It is also worth noting here the great disparity between Assuerus and the Xerxes known to early modern readers via the Greek tradition. Xerxes’ character, as presented in Herodotus and thus in both the dominant Athenian tradition and its literary descendants, 30 Happé and Hüsken, ‘Introduction’, Interludes and Early Modern Society, p. 10. 31 Lily Campbell, Divine Poetry and Drama in Sixteenth-Century England (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1961), p. 208. 32 Summer, ‘“Like Another Esther”’, p. 51. For further readings of the differences between the Book of Esther and Godly Queene Hester, see Ruth Blackburn, Biblical Drama Under the Tudors (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), p. 29; Mike Pincombe, ‘Comic Treatment of Tragic Character in Godly Queen Hester’.

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was perceived as that of a ‘cruel and impious despot, bent on imperial supremacy’, even if his portrayal was not entirely one of ‘tyrannical brutality’.33 The lack of drinking in the Hester version of the story further distances Assuerus from the stereotype of Persian drunkenness (and of politicians making decisions while drunk) inherited from Herodotus. The absence of Vashti from the narrative in Hester strengthens Assuerus’ positive qualities, as does the treatment of the Esther/ Hester character. In the biblical version of the narrative, Ahasuerus agrees to the nationwide hunt for a new wife, following his dismissal of Vashti, for his own pleasure: ‘the thing pleased the king; and he did so’ (2.4). In Hester, Assuerus wishes to marry for his own pleasure, but also because he recognises the need to provide an heir for his kingdom: ‘It hath not been oft seene, / But the prince with a princes matched hath beene / Leaste defaulte of issue shoulde be’ (ll. 119–21). Then, in choosing a wife, Assuerus is less lascivious and self-centred than his biblical counterpart. The Book of Esther details the lengthy beauty treatments undergone by ‘all the fair young virgins’ (2.3), and the arrangements by which each is prepared for a year before visiting the king at night, and then being housed in the harem, after which ‘she came in unto the king no more, except the king delighted in her’ (2.14). It is following his night with Esther that Ahasuerus shows her favour, and he makes her queen because he is captivated by her beauty and charm (2.17). In Hester, Hester and Mardocheus (Mordechai) are encountered by a messenger who has been sent to seek prospective brides; having been brought to Assuerus by Aman, Hester is noticed by the king, who addresses her: But ye faire damsell of the highest stature, And of most ripe age, as shoulde seame Of all this companye of most fynest nature. Tell vs your linage, for as yet we deame, your lookes be so lusty, and in loue so breme If that your demenour hereafter be sene To that accordynge, ye shalbe our queen. (ll. 230–36)

33 Emma Bridges, Imagining Xerxes: Ancient Perspectives on a Persian King (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), pp. 46–47, p. 50. Jane Grogan discusses Xerxes as representing ‘Persian vices’ in Aeschylus’ Persae; see Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 35.

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Assuerus remarks here on Hester’s physical appearance, but also her ‘nature’, and states his interest in learning about her ‘demenour’; he goes on to ascertain her ‘lernynge’, asking her what she considers to be the ‘vertues that be best, and fittest for a queene’ (l. 264, 268). Hester then discourses on the importance of queenly wisdom and goodness, deferring to Assuerus’ authority, but speaking her mind at length. Mardocheus also testifies to Hester’s good character and wisdom, the latter being a characteristic which is not mentioned in the biblical version of the story: ‘Sober, sad, gentill, meke and demure, / In learninge and litterature, profoundely seene, / In wisdome, eke semblante to Saba the Quene’ (ll. 257–59). It is after his discussion with Hester that Assuerus calls her ‘our Queene’ (l. 330), making his choice of new bride. The Ahasuerus of the biblical narrative, lusty, quick to anger, given to physical pleasures, is replaced by a measured, thoughtful, attentive king who seeks a partner who will support him and equal him in virtue. At the end of the interlude, Assuerus speaks of the importance of not privileging one’s own pleasure, saying that the multitude will be hurt by the head’s negligence if a king puts his own interests first. In so doing, he is entirely opposed to the position of Ahasuerus, who puts pleasure above all other things. If the king of Hester is more virtuous than his biblical equivalent, then the opposite is true of his chief advisor: Aman is shown to be uncharitable, hypocritical and self-centred. As Saralyn Ellen Summer has argued, his lack of charity is established by the three Vices, Ambition, Adulation and Pryde.34 Ambition says that many people who used to be fed through others’ hospitality now find all doors shut to them; consequently, they are starving, ‘and no man can we get / To worcke neither to fyghte’ (ll. 477–78). Aman is seen by the people as the source of this problem: Beggers now do banne, and crye out of Aman, That ever he was borne. They swere by the roode, he eatyth up all their foode, So that they gett no good, neyther even nor morne. (ll. 469–72)

We later learn that Aman intends to destroy the Jewish people because they did ‘Not feede the poore by hospitalitie / Their possessions he sayde, were all but hydde, / Amonge them selves lyvyng voluptuouslye’ (ll. 944–46). We have already learned, however, that the lack of hospitality 34 Summer, ‘“Like Another Esther”’, pp. 64–66.

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is not restricted to Jews and can in fact be blamed on Aman himself. (Hester later reminds Assuerus that the notion of hospitality is an important element of Jewish culture and history from Abraham and continuing through Isaac and Jacob, ‘Of whom the twelve tribes descended be, / Which ever dyd maintaine hospitallyte’ (ll. 962–63).) To the Jews who respond to the decree for their death, Aman is a ‘ravenous wolfe’ (l. 820), who wants to gain their property through murder, ‘And him selfe enlarge his pride to avaunce’ (ll. 841–2). As well as being inhospitable, then, Aman is seen as acting for reasons of personal greed. The characteristic of pride is central to the portrayal of Aman in Hester. In explaining his actions in a public letter read towards the end of the interlude, Assuerus blames his former advisor’s ‘pryde’, which led him nearly to destroy the queen and the Jewish people in a course of action that would most likely have ended in the king’s own death (l. 1133, ll. 1136–7). Aman is thus not only a weak man and a bad councillor, but also a potential regicide. There are two things happening here which are worth noting in more detail. Firstly, the author of Hester chooses in this letter to distance Aman from Persia itself. The scribe proclaims that Aman is ‘A Macedone borne and lyke to theyr owne kynde / Not of our nacion’ (ll. 1125–6): as a Macedonian, this Aman is distinct from the Persians, like the king and his court at Susa. Secondly, in his portrayal as proud and arrogant, Aman absorbs a common stereotype of Persian kings, and Xerxes in particular. Emma Bridges has detailed the various ways in which classical authors, including Isocrates, Aeschylus and Valerius, presented Xerxes as proud and overconfident.35 The more morally dubious aspects of Xerxes as reported in the Book of Esther and the classical tradition, such as his love of pleasure36 and his taste for rich clothing and luxury, are in Hester associated with Aman rather than Assuerus, and Aman is simultaneously distanced from Persia itself. This distancing of Aman from a Persian identity and the increase in his negative qualities are paralleled with Assuerus’ more virtuous portrayal. Together these features constitute an attempt to avoid the stereotype of Persian luxury and debauchery which the sixteenth century inherited from the Greek tradition, as the male characters are polarised and the ‘Persian’ identity cleansed of its more negative associations.

35 Bridges, Imagining Xerxes, p. 28, pp. 108–109. 36 Bridges, Imagining Xerxes, p. 169.

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Hester is a rarity in early sixteenth-century drama, due to its central narrative focus on a virtuous woman; indeed, only one prior example is known from this period.37 Although both versions of the character are celebrated for their virtue, the interlude’s portrayal of Hester is also markedly different from that of the Bible. Her discourse on the characteristics necessary for a good queen, referred to above, is a detailed and politically astute consideration of royal responsibility. Hester advocates for female intellectual capacity and education, demonstrating to Assuerus ‘Her lernynge and her language eloquent’ (l. 204) and convincing him that she is capable of reigning with him ‘By truth and Justice, law and equitye’ (ll. 299–300). She also has a view on policy, advising the king on how to benefit the poor; as Summer has remarked, ‘her willingness to wield power is reflected in her commentary on a queen’s role in protecting the kingdom’, in which she demonstrates an understanding of a queen’s potential function in managing and defending the realm.38 As Summer has also noted, ‘the emphasis on Hester’s linguistic gifts as a measure of her suitability for the king contrasts sharply with the biblical Esther, whose initial conversation with Ahasuerus can only be surmised’.39 For Kent Cartwright, Hester is a type of a ‘new humanist woman’, ‘a learned, articulate, and politically skillful female advancing by merit’ who constitutes a ‘stimulating embodiment on stage’ of the defence of women.40 While both Esther and Hester are presented as virtuous and attractive, Godly Queene Hester considerably expands the biblical Esther into a powerful, articulate potential queen who is already fitted for political rule. In this context, it is profitable to return to the description of Hester by Mardocheus as ‘semblante to Saba the Quene’ (l. 259). The Queen of ‘Saba’ or Sheba appears several times in the Bible; in the Book of Kings, she comes to Jerusalem to test the wisdom of King Solomon, ‘with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold’, giving Solomon gold, spices and jewels (1 Kings 10.2, 10.10). Unnamed in the Bible, the Old Testament Queen of Sheba

37 Dillon, ‘Powerful Obedience: Godly Queen Hester and Katherine of Aragon’, p. 117. 38 Summer, ‘“Like Another Esther”’, p. 58. 39 Summer, ‘“Like Another Esther”’, p. 58. 40 Cartwright, Theatre and Humanism, p. 136.

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‘has no specific origin other than from the south, but was later related to Arabia or, alternatively Ethiopia’.41 The description of Hester as resembling Sheba is clearly intended to emphasise her intelligence, given the Queen’s widely accepted status as a wise and well-educated woman.42 But it is also possible that the association of Hester with Sheba may have had other effects for its audience, in both 1529 and 1561. Sheba was a hybrid figure in early Renaissance visual art and literature, as Matthew Dimmock explains: She could be an icon of non-specific ‘strangeness’ with biblical justification, for she is described as coming ‘from the utmost parts of the earth’ in Luke 11.31. So Philip II, King of Spain, could deliberately present himself as descended from King Solomon in the context of Habsburg/Ottoman rivalry because the gifts presented by the Queen of Sheba implied the subjection of Islam to Christianity, or the ‘east’ to the ‘west’. A little earlier, in contrast, Mary, Queen of France, was widely celebrated in text and illustration as the Queen of Sheba on her entry into Paris in November 1514, with none of the obvious ‘Eastern’ associations that are so prominent elsewhere.43

Hester also has a hybrid identity or potentially contradictory associations in her portrayal both in the Book of Esther and in Hester: she is both foreign, in being a Jewish woman living in the Diaspora, and familiar, as a defender of the true faith in the Bible and model of virtuous queenship. Furthermore, the sixteenth century inherited from the medieval period an impression of Sheba as challenging gender norms, sometimes in apparently dangerous ways44 ; Hester, too, exhibits masculine characteristics. Esther in the Bible was read in the seventeenth century as having a

41 Stephan Schmuck, ‘From Sermon to Play: Literary Representations of “Turks” in Renaissance England 1550–1625’, Literature Compass, 2 (2006), 1–29 (3); Ania Loomba, Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 122. 42 Matthew Dimmock, Elizabethan Globalism: England, China and the Rainbow

Portrait (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), p. 198. 43 Dimmock, Elizabethan Globalism, p. 194. 44 Jacob Lassner, Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in

Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 1; see also Paul F. Watson, ‘The Queen of Sheba in Christian Tradition’, in Solomon & Sheba, ed. by Pritchard, pp. 115–45.

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notably ‘masculine and heroicke spirit’45 ; this is reflected in Hester in her capacity for forthright and learned eloquence and other perceived masculine attributes, including her ‘kingly virtue’.46 Finally Sheba, an epitome of the ‘east’, often appeared as an emblem of foreign power; in one early sixteenth-century portrait, her encounter with a ‘squat, stocky, sprawling, and scowling’ Solomon who is ‘a thinly disguised portrait of Henry VIII of England’ reconfigures her as ‘an emblem of the “Catholique” church’ submitting to Henry rather than Rome.47 If this latter context is rather late to be of significance for an interlude dating from the late 1520s, it is nonetheless evident from contemporary portraiture of Sheba that she was frequently represented as bringing ‘the bounty of an unfamiliar world and lay[ing] it at the feet of Solomon, the embodiment of Judeo-Christian tradition’.48 Hester as Sheba performs a similar function both in displaying her wisdom and eloquence to Assuerus and in serving as a model of virtuous behaviour, and other qualities, for her sixteenth-century audience.

Hester: The Political Contexts The original historical context of Hester has been used to show that the ‘godly queene’ is a figure for Katherine of Aragon, that Haman is a version of Cardinal Wolsey, who compromises the safety of a religious group for his own gain, and that the Jewish people represent the monasteries which were vulnerable to the increasing power accorded to civil authority by Henry VIII.49 In this context, the interlude may be read as ‘an allegorical attempt to discourage Henry VIII from divorcing Catherine, idealized in Hester as a spiritual figurehead and agent of political unity under the Catholic Church’.50 David Bevington has contended that the play may have been performed specifically for Katherine in order to encourage 45 Thomas Heywood, The Exemplary Lives and Memorable Acts of Nine the Most Worthy Women of the World (1640), sig. **2. 46 Michelle Ephraim, Reading the Jewish Woman on the Elizabethan Stage (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p. 43. 47 Dimmock, Elizabethan Globalism, p. 196, quoting Watson, ‘The Queen of Sheba in Christian Tradition’, p. 131. 48 Dimmock, Elizabethan Globalism, p. 193. 49 Ephraim, Reading the Jewish Woman on the Elizabethan Stage, p. 28 fn. 5. 50 Ephraim, Reading the Jewish Woman on the Elizabethan Stage, p. 28.

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and comfort her, while Greg Walker has examined the play’s concern for the protection of the monasteries, with Aman’s endangering of the Jews representing the threat posed to the religious orders by Wolsey.51 Janette Dillon’s detailed and persuasive reading of the parallels between Hester and Katherine draws attention to Katherine’s reputation for piety, devotion and learning, characteristics which are all emphasised in the Hester version of the narrative.52 Gavin Schwartz-Leeper reads Hester as ‘almost certainly directed specifically at Wolsey’, largely via the character of Aman, who is seen to resemble Wolsey in his pride, hypocrisy and ostentatious clothing, and to a lesser extent the Vice characters. One aspect of this latter reading is particularly illuminating with regard to the Persian context of the play. Schwartz-Leeper argues that parts of the text criticise ‘Wolsey’s perceived attempts to manipulate foreign affairs’, and in particular his tendency to deception and cowardice; Pryde describes a type of man (meaning Aman and Wolsey) who is false and hypocritical: ‘In peace he is bolde, but in war he is colde’ (l. 352). This kind of person will fight neither ‘In warre nor in peace’ (l. 362), gaining riches which they refuse to share. The portrayal of Aman as ‘a cowardly diplomat hypocritically pressing for Persian dominance while urging peace’ is heightened by the common awareness that Persia was a highly successful and powerful global force.53 Renowned for its wealth and luxury, Persia made a suitable environment for considering the question of the promotion of war in order to increase wealth. In Hester, this activity is seen as enriching the few rather than the nation as a whole; despite the general wealth of the court, the gains of ‘corne and cattell. / Bullyon and plate’ (ll. 363–4) are kept by the deceitful men, ‘And yf once they get it, let us no moore crave it, / By God, we comme to late’ (ll. 365–6). Given that Persia had a reputation for the tolerance of religious minority groups within the

51 David Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics: A Critical Approach to Topical Meaning (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 94; Greg Walker, Plays of Persuasion: Drama and Politics at the Court of Henry VIII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), Chapter 4. 52 Dillon, ‘Powerful Obedience: Godly Queen Hester and Katherine of Aragon’. 53 Gavin Schwartz-Leeper, From Princes to Pages: The Literary Lives of Cardinal Wolsey,

Tudor England’s ‘Other King’ (Leiden: Brill, 2016), p. 68. The possible date of 1529 puts the play ‘perhaps very shortly before’ the fall of Wolsey in the autumn of that year; see Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics, p. 92.

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state, the Persian element of the Esther story may have seemed particularly apposite in encouraging Katherine to work for the protection of Catholic minorities. A particular event of 1513 may have further strengthened the association between Hester and Katherine. When Henry appointed Katherine his regent during his absence from England while invading France, Katherine was obliged to rally the troops to defend the northern borders against a subsequent invasion from Scotland.54 As Summer notes, this reading is encouraged by the fact ‘the playwright anachronistically refers to England’s traditional enemies when another character worries “yf warre should chaunce, eyther wyth Scotland or Fraunce” (l. 479)’.55 Katherine was also known to have interceded with Henry on behalf of the citizens who were threatened with execution due to their participation in the May Day riots of 1517.56 Hester’s role in the interlude could thus be seen to appeal to Katherine’s position as defender and protector of the English people as a whole, and not only of the Catholic minority. It is also productive to consider the role of the Assuerus character in this broader context. In the Book of Esther, Ahasuerus gives a great feast to his nobles in the third year of his reign; in Herodotus, the occasion which takes place in the third year of Xerxes’ reign is a council of nobles, summoned to consider the war against Greece. Hester is closer to the Herodotean account in opening with a gathering of counsel on the subject of the greatest kingly virtues. This emphasises the king’s openness to advice and interest in discussion, suggesting that Assuerus represents a type of a Persian king who readily accepts counsel, qualities of Persian kings that were also emphasised by Xenophon.57 If Hester offers a model of virtuous and protective queenship, then Assuerus is an image of a king who actively seeks counsel and attends to his counsellors. The printing of Hester in 1561 has enabled further comparisons between the characters from the interlude and the Tudor court. Michelle Ephraim, amongst others, has drawn attention to ‘the context of contemporary associations between Esther and Elizabeth’, arguing that 54 Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics, p. 90; Summer, “‘Like Another Esther’”, pp. 61–62. 55 Summer, “‘Like Another Esther’”, p. 62. 56 Summer, “‘Like Another Esther’”, p. 64. 57 See Jane Grogan, Exemplary Spenser: Visual and Poetic Pedagogy in The Faerie Queene

(Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), p. 64.

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‘Elizabethan exegetes embraced the theme of legitimate spiritual rebellion within the Book of Esther, and [that] Esther’s salvation of the Jews powerfully evokes Elizabeth’s own protection of her Protestant subjects’.58 As the 1529/30 production of Hester consoled Katherine ‘with a scriptural vindication of her cause’,59 so its manifestation in 1561 was prompted by a ‘similar desire to legitimate Elizabeth through scriptural example’, as Hester’s defence of the Jewish people is paralleled in Elizabeth’s role as staunch defender of Protestantism.60 In Hester’s presentation of Esther’s role in protecting her people in a dangerous environment, the question of who printed the text as well as when it was printed is significant. In 1561, Thomas Hackett, one of the printers of Hester, was producing other texts with strongly Protestant leanings, including some in collaboration with John Tisdale, who also printed some of John Bale’s polemical treatises.61 There remained both Catholic and Protestant factions at court late 1550s and early 1560s, and ‘religious conservatives were a force to be reckoned with in Elizabethan politics’ during this period, despite the fact that the regime was ‘supposedly dominated by forward Protestants’.62 Promoting to Elizabeth, the importance of her own role in upholding the place of Protestantism appears to have seemed a worthwhile endeavour to some, and perhaps Pickering’s and Hackett’s printing of Hester can be understood as part of that endeavour. In later life, Elizabeth seemed to welcome Esther as a potential model for aspects of her own queenship; Esther was represented in a later Tudor interlude and in 1578 appeared in a pageant performed as part of the queen’s progress, while Elizabeth herself prayed to be given strength over

58 Ephraim, Reading the Jewish Woman on the Elizabethan Stage, p. 28, p. 29. 59 Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics, p. 94. 60 Ephraim, Reading the Jewish Woman on the Elizabethan Stage, p. 29. Kent Cartwright also suggests that the publication of Hester in 1561 ‘may celebrate the new queen Elizabeth, who might be imagined as Hester saving her people from religious persecution’, in Theatre and Humanism, p. 292 fn. 40. 61 Kirk Melnikoff, Elizabethan Publishing and the Makings of Literary Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), Chapter 2. 62 Neil Younger, ‘How Protestant was the Elizabethan Regime?’, The English Historical Review, 133 (October 2018), 1060–1092.

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England’s enemies ‘like another Esther’.63 A number of reasons have been suggested to explain why the Esther story as portrayed in Hester might have seemed worth bringing to public attention in 1561. The interlude is one of a number of dramas from this period which may have appealed to the new queen in featuring active, politically engaged women who make decisions and are able to act for themselves.64 Also significant is the interlude’s focus on marriage, which may have been seen to have a particular bearing on Elizabeth’s relationship with Robert Dudley, whose wife had died in September 1560 and who was, in late 1560 and early 1561, seeking support for his desire to marry the queen – a prospect which she appears to have been taking seriously.65 It is equally possible that the story of a new wife influencing her foreign husband in positive ways and for the protection of her people may have resonated at a time when Elizabeth was being encouraged by some to consider a foreign match. During the first years of her reign, the young queen attracted matrimonial interest from a number of European suitors, including Philip II of Spain, Eric XIV of Sweden and noblemen from Austria, Savoy, Ferrara and Saxony, amongst others.66 And if the Esther story offered Elizabeth an exhortation to marriage, it also proposed a model of active and masculine queenship within marriage, as Hester ‘cunningly deploys her body as an effective political tool and humbly ascribes her fortitude to her masculine attributes – her kingly virtue’.67 In so doing, as Ephraim points out, Hester’s ‘assertion that “[a]s in the kynge, so be in the Quene” anticipates Elizabeth’s claim to “the body of a weak and feeble woman” but “the heart and stomach of a King”’ in her speech at Tilsbury in 1588. Hester is an appealing figure of a female monarch who has a clear sense 63 Elizabeth I: Collected Works, ed. by Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 157; Summer, ‘“Like Another Esther”’, pp. 13, 10. 64 See Cartwright, Theatre and Humanism, p. 138; Allyna E. Ward, Women and Tudor Tragedy: Feminizing Counsel and Representing Gender (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013), p. 109. 65 Summer, ‘“Like Another Esther”’, pp. 70, 74. Summer argues in favour of a possible

connection between Dudley and the character of Haman. On the marriage controversies during this stage of Elizabeth’s reign, see Susan Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I (London: Routledge, 1996). On Elizabeth’s serious interest in marrying Dudley, see Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, p. 11. 66 Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, p. 21. 67 Ephraim, Reading the Jewish Woman on the Elizabethan Stage, p. 43.

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of her own virtue, authority and capacity for agency, especially given that by the end of the interlude, she has taken on a number of aspects of the king’s own rule, including drafting policy and moralising on his behalf. Although there is much in the interlude which could encourage an association between Elizabeth and Hester, both as wives and as queens, it is productive to consider the ways in which Hester may have spoken to its monarch beyond that association. A subject to which Hester frequently returns is that of royal counsel and political advice in general: the importance of ‘wise counsel’ has been identified as one part of the play’s ‘double thrust’ (the other being ‘concern for the defenceless’).68 In advocating careful attention to counsel, and dramatising the risks of trusting false counsellors via Aman, the interlude had particular relevance to the political climate of the late 1550s and early 1560s, as Elizabeth formed her first Privy Council and began the process of establishing the circle of trusted advisors who would guide and assist her governance of the country. On Mary’s death in 1558, her own council had been dissolved; at her accession, Elizabeth had appointed twenty new privy councillors, sticking to a relatively small and close group of advisors.69 Assuerus—an intelligent king who learns both to heed good advice and to be cautious in the selection of his advisors—may have seemed just as relevant a model for Elizabeth as Hester. His belief in kingly virtue is frequently made evident, not least by himself: ‘Quoque, si princeps malus populus corvet [Also, if the prince is bad, the people fall]’.70 Behind Assuerus stands Xerxes, the king whom the sixteenth-century audience would have known from Herodotus to have suffered with inadequate advice and counsellors.71 It was also known from Herodotus that Persian kings considered their kingship to be divinely sanctioned, just as Elizabeth perceived her own

68 Robert A. Logan, ed., The Jew of Malta: A Critical Reader (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2013), p. 96. See also Greg Walker, ed., Medieval Drama: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p. 400, fn. 1. 69 Wallace MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I (London: Edward Arnold, 1993), p. 38; Susan Doran, Elizabeth I And Her Circle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 8. 70 Godly Queene Hester, l. 93; the reference is to Proverbs 11:14. 71 Robert Rollinger, ‘Herodotus’, Encyclopedia Iranica (2003), Vol. 12, Fasc. 3,

pp. 270–76.

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rule to be providential.72 In Hester, it is clear that power is perceived to be wielded by the king ‘with his council’, and the role of advice-giving emphasised. Hence, there are multiple ways in which Hester may have seemed apt for revival in the political climate of the early 1560s, not only through its portrayal of a virtuous and independent queen, but in its dramatisation of the challenges of counsel for a reigning monarch.73

Conclusion In both its 1520s and 1560s versions, Godly Queene Hester is a play written largely in ignorance of contemporary Persia. 1561 was also the year when Anthony Jenkinson began his journey through Russia into Persia; prior to that point, there was insufficient contact between England and Persia for the English audience to have much awareness of the realities of the contemporary Safavid empire.74 Jenkinson was much admired for getting as far as Persia and was ‘credited with laying the foundations for the first Anglo-Persian contacts in the early modern period’.75 Without these foundations, entertainments like Hester show little knowledge of or interest in the ‘real’ Persia. In Hester, Achaemenid Persia offers a useful background for considering issues which pertain to English domestic politics. Persia is useful in part because it is both known and unknown: an actual place, but still something of a blank canvas on which the imagined empire may be depicted. The Persia of Hester is a largely benign place, as biblical Persia was to the Jewish people, and the negative stereotypes of Persia are avoided in an effort to make it a more suitable background for discussing matters pertaining to English politics. The 72 Elizabeth’s own writings display her belief from the beginning of her reign that her

queenship was divinely sanctioned. See Ted Booth, A Body Politic to Govern: The Political Humanism of Elizabeth I (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), p. 79. 73 On the interlude’s contribution to contemporary political discourse, see also Chanita Goodblatt, Jewish and Christian Voices in English Reformation Biblical Drama: Enacting Family and Monarchy (New York: Routledge, 2018), Chapter Two. 74 See Kurosh Meshkat, ‘The Journey of Master Anthony Jenkinson to Persia (1562)’, Journal of Early Modern History, 13 (2009), 209–28; Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 1. Jenkinson is sometimes described as the ‘first English ambassador to Persia’; see Saeed Shirazi, A Concise History of Iran: From the Early Period to the Present Time (Pacoima, CA: Ketab Corporation, 2017), p. 209. 75 Kurosh Meshkat, ‘The Journey of Master Anthony Jenkinson to Persia (1562)’ (Master’s thesis, University of Oslo, 2005).

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factors which featured in Hester’s story, especially concerning good governance and the importance of good counsel, would also be of interest to later sixteenth-century dramatists as they continued to employ Persia and Persian narratives in order to discuss these topics in the English context.

CHAPTER 3

‘[A]dvice Unto a Prince’: Kingship and Counsel in Kyng Daryus (Anonymous, 1565) and Cambises (Thomas Preston, c. 1560)

Introduction The study of plays of Persia in the latter half of the sixteenth century is dominated by the behemoth that is Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great Parts 1 and 2. Less canonical texts have received comparatively little attention, and their Persian contexts are often not discussed. Persia, however, continued to feature in later sixteenth-century drama, and Tamburlaine, the subject of the following chapter, was not the only stage tyrant to have, or to develop, a Persian identity. The Bible remained a major source of information and inspiration for dramatists throughout the period of Elizabeth’s reign; like The Godly Queene Hester, later Elizabethan interludes and plays re-wrote Biblical Persian figures, creating points of connection to contemporary politics. In doing so, they also drew on classical Greek sources, such as Herodotus and Xenophon, and English texts that served as intermediaries to the Greeks, in their portrayal of Persian monarchs. Such entertainments sought both to consolidate Elizabeth’s position by advocating a Protestant—and female—leadership for the country and to present a speculum principis in which Elizabeth was invited to see parallels of her own situation and of contemporary debate. Plays such as the anonymous Kyng Daryus (1565) spoke directly © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Houston, Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699, New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22618-2_3

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to Elizabeth and sought to promote her interests; others, like Thomas Preston’s Cambises (c. 1560/1, printed 1569), engaged with aspects of governance in potentially critical and challenging ways.1 In both of these plays, Persia has a set of distinguishable identities which shape and influence the drama’s presentation of its political subjects. The drama of this period has often been dismissed critically, as suffering from ‘predictable didactic morals and psychologically unbelievable characters’,2 but considering the plays in their political contexts and with reference to their Persian elements demonstrates that they were highly contemporary texts which spoke directly to the political concerns of the time.

Kyng Daryus One Tudor interlude which used Persian characters to offer political guidance to Elizabeth and her court was Kyng Daryus , published anonymously in 1565. The play, which is announced on its title page as a ‘Pretie new Enterlude both pithie and plesaunt’, contains two sets of scenes, interspersed. It is an example of what David Bevington termed the ‘hybrid’ morality play, or ‘hybrid drama’, referring to plays which ‘set abstractions and concrete figures side by side together in the same play’ and represent an important stage in the transition of sixteenth-century theatre ‘from the mediaeval drama of allegory to the later Renaissance drama of secular concern’.3 In the first set of scenes, a number of virtues and vices battle for supremacy: Charity, followed by Equity, attempts to persuade Iniquity, the Vice figure, to see the error of his ways, along with his companions Importunity and Partiality. Eventually, Equity, joined by Constancy and Charity, having failed to convert Iniquity, drives him off. The second group of scenes, set at the court of King Darius, begin with Darius giving a banquet, with Persia, Juda and Media as his guests. After 1 In this chapter, I will discuss Kyng Daryus before Cambises, despite the earlier performance date of the latter play. This is partly because some of my analysis will focus on (earlier) printed elements of the text, such as the Prologue, and partly to preserve the connection between Daryus and Hester, both of which are primarily based on biblical sources. 2 Robert N. Watson, ‘Tragedy’, in The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama, ed. by A. R. Braunmuller and Michael Hattaway, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 307. 3 David Bevington, From ‘Mankind’ to Marlowe: Growth of Structure in the Popular Drama of Tudor England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 10.

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they have left, Darius announces a contest of wits at which three of his attendants will attempt to establish the strongest power in the world. The winner is Zorobabell, who initially argues in favour of women and men’s love for them, but then says that God and the truth are the strongest powers. As a reward, Darius permits Zorobabell’s request to be allowed to rebuild Jerusalem, and the interlude ends with a prayer for the queen. The two elements of the interlude seem disconnected in nature, a factor which has been viewed as leading to the play’s comparative neglect in studies of early modern drama about Persia.4 Ruth Blackburn, who dismisses the former category of scenes as ‘particularly uninspired anti-papal morality’, and David Bevington both note that ‘the virtuous characters of the main plot embody the very qualities that are personified in the scenes of allegory’, with Zorobabell representing constancy and Daryus embodying equity and charity.5 Like Hester, and as is also stated on its title page, Kyng Daryus takes the Bible as its source; it is based on a story from the third and fourth chapters of the first Book of Esdras.6 The Book of Esdras is considered apocryphal and was listed as such in the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England which were initiated under the church’s Convocation of 1563, before their finalisation and incorporation into the Book of Common Prayer in 1571. Elsewhere in the Bible, the Book of Ezra establishes Darius as the Persian king who completes the building of the Temple in Jerusalem, an act which, Sheiba Kian Kaufman has argued,

4 Darryll Grantley, English Dramatic Interludes, 1300–1580: A Reference Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 183; Hafiz Abid Masood, ‘From Cyrus to Abb¯as: Staging Persia in Early Modern England’ (DPhil thesis, University of Sussex, 2011), p. 17. It should be acknowledged that many scholars consider Kyng Daryus to be of little merit. David Bevington recognises the play’s structural importance but judges that it has ‘much dull poetry’ (Bevington, From ‘Mankind’ to Marlowe, p. 175); Glynne Wickham described its author as one who ‘appears to have thought that moral zeal coupled with a modicum of literary skill was all that was needed to make a play’ and judged the text itself to be ‘a crashing bore’ (Glynne Wickham, ed., Early English Stages 1300–1660. Volume Three: Plays and Their Makers Up to 1576 [London and New York: Routledge, 1981; 2nd edn 2002], p. 78). 5 Ruth Blackburn, Biblical Drama Under the Tudors (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), p. 127; Bevington, From ‘Mankind’ to Marlowe, p. 176. 6 Blackburn considers other points of similarity between Hester and Daryus in Biblical Drama Under the Tudors, pp. 125–26.

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could be considered ‘analogous to continuing the work of the Reformation in England and fortifying the Anglican Church’.7 As Kaufman further contends, Kyng Daryus ‘structures a series of events that lead to the reminder of the promise Darius makes to Zorrobel (1 Esdras)’, i.e., the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Again, Persia’s role in the biblical tradition makes it a useful location due to its perceived hospitality to the Jews and role in their return to Jerusalem. In the interlude, Persia also has a particular identity and role to play. For example, when the four guests at the banquet greet Darius, each calls on God to save the king or give him victory over his enemies. Only Persia formulates this wish with reference to Jesus: ‘Jesu preserue thee alwaye’ (p. 26). As Abid Masood notes, this suggests a Christian affinity that exists with Persia, though not with the other provinces controlled by Darius8 ; Persia’s following line, ‘And saue thee from thy enemies for euer and aye’, might also recall for the Christian audience Numbers 10:9: ‘ye shall be remembered before the Lord your God, and shall be saved from your enemies’. As the last chapter discussed, Tudor interludes have frequently been read as engaging with political contexts and speaking directly to those in power. Their performance conditions, perhaps involving being put on in banquet halls between the courses of a meal, meant that they were occasions ripe with opportunities for so doing. Their representation of dialogue—E. K. Chambers considered the interlude a ‘ludus in dialogue’—allows for their engagement in various forms of debate.9 In the case of Darius, the play has long been recognised as having an ‘obviously civil purpose’; the anglicising of some of the place names emphasising its relevance to the English context.10 It is within this context that what Kaufman calls its ‘anti-papal Protestant polemical subplot’ can be understood, in which, as Bevington has written, the virtues of Charity,

7 Sheiba Kian Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe: Persia and the Early Modern English Stage’ (PhD thesis, University of California, Irvine, 2016), p. 44. 8 Masood, ‘From Cyrus to Abb¯ as’, p. 38. 9 E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903), vol. 2,

p. 183. 10 J. Wilson McCutchan, ‘Justice and Equity in the English Morality Play’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 19, 3 (1958), 405–10 (408).

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Equity and Constancy defeat the vices and in doing so achieve a ‘victory for the Reformation’.11 The medieval genre of ‘mirror-for-princes’ drama can itself be understood as constituting a form of counsel or advice to a particular monarch, or to monarchs in general. Daryus, in which the action takes place ‘when the kynge in counsayle was set’, has been read as a form of counsel to or flattery of Elizabeth; Bevington has viewed the character of Daryus as ‘a mirror for Christian princes’, while Blackburn has suggested that ‘Zerubbabel’s elaborate compliments to women provide the justification for this pedestrian little play’.12 The notion that Daryus is intended as a model of kingship is upheld by the commentary on him in the text itself; he is introduced, for example, as ‘(good and vertuous) / Of nature also both louing and courtuous’ (A2r). Like his guests, Daryus makes reference to God in a manner that suggests he is a Christian: ‘God prosper your iourney, and send you good lucke; / And from your ennemyes all you plucke’, for example (D4r). The representation of counsel in this interlude is more complex and nuanced than such a reading might suggest, however. Daryus shares with other Tudor interludes an active engagement with contemporary literature about counsel which complicates a straightforward reading of the text in which Daryus is meant to serve as a model for the queen. Recent scholarship on political drama of the 1560s has explored the influence of earlier sixteenth-century political dialogues on its representation of counsel. Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville’s Gorboduc (1561) and Richard Edwards’ Damon and Pythias (1564–1565), for example, drew on the works of the humanist and political writer Thomas Elyot, such as The Boke Named the Governour (1531) and The Image of Governance (1541). Gorboduc, ‘a tragedy concerned with counsel’ which addresses the questions of Elizabeth’s marriage and future succession, acknowledges the ‘complex, even troubled, sense of the difficulties that 11 Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’, p. 43; David M. Bevington, From ‘Mankind’ to Marlowe: Growth of Structure in the Popular Drama of Tudor England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 76. 12 Anonymous, A pretie new enterlude both pithie [et] pleasaunt of the story of Kyng

Daryus beinge taken out of the third and fourth chapter of the thyrd booke of Esdras (1565), A2r; Bevington, From ‘Mankind’ to Marlowe, p. 176; Blackburn, Biblical Drama Under the Tudors, p. 128. Glynne Wickham also views the ‘oration on the supremacy of love and of women […] as loosely directed towards Queen Elizabeth I and her council’ (Wickham, Early English Stages 1300–1660, p. 78).

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attend this practice’.13 Jennifer Richards draws our attention to the ways in which Gorboduc calls into question the proper form of counsel: What is striking about this scene of counsel, however, is the lack of discussion. Gorboduc shows no interest in thinking about or judging between the opinions he is offered, and this makes the dialogue between king and counsellors seem purely a matter of ‘form’. Gorboduc is asking his counsellors to comment on a decision that he has, in effect, already taken. In the end, he does as he pleases, seeing no reason to change his mind. Of the three counsellors, Eubulus proves the most prescient, and Gorboduc would have been wise to have considered his advice: ‘Britain’ and the royal family are destroyed by the division of the kingdom.14

Richards notes that the proper form and manner of counsel were subjects which occupied Elyot in The Image of Governance, which describes the best ‘fourme’ of ‘Counsayle’, demonstrating ‘its relationship to Tudor rhetorical training’. Richards quotes Elyot: Everye mans opinion and sentence was throughely and quietly herde, without interruption or altercation […] assemblinge and ponderynge [each sentence] throughly, after a competent tyme therin bestowed, eyther gatheringe of them one perfecte conclusion, or elles addynge to some thynge of his inuention, [Severus] fynally opened his conceipt amonge all his counsaylours.15

If Norton and Sackville turned to Elyot as example of the proper form of counsel in order to contrast Gorboduc negatively with this ideal, then the author of Daryus was interested in dialogues of counsel for a different reason; he chose rather to exemplify the proper form of counsel in action 13 Jennifer Richards, ‘Male Friendship and Counsel in Richard Edwards’ Damon and Pythias ’, in The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama, ed. by Thomas Betteridge and Greg Walker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 297. See Dermot Cavanagh, Language and Politics in the Sixteenth-Century History Play (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 42–43; 54–55. See also Dermot Cavanagh, ‘Political Tragedy in the 1560s: Cambises and Gorboduc’, in The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature, ed. by Mike Pincombe and Cathy Shrank (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 488–503. 14 Richards, ‘Male Friendship and Counsel in Richard Edwards’ Damon and Pythias ’, p. 298. 15 Richards, ‘Male Friendship and Counsel in Richard Edwards’ Damon and Pythias ’, p. 301.

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through the Persian monarch. It is significant that the author of Daryus, like Richard Edwards in Damon and Pythias , represents male friendship as an idealised relationship for the delivery of counsel; after Zorobabell has spoken, Daryus announces that ‘thou shalt be my freind as long as thou doest live, / Thou shalt be my famylyer freind / And live with me to thy lives ende’ (H2v). The ideal form of counsel and the close relationship between council and king are also covered in Elyot’s The Image of Governance. The Image describes the rule of the late Roman emperor Alexander Severus and devotes a chapter to the manner in which he held his council. Like Darius arranging the competition between his three courtiers, Alexander favours listening to the spoken opinions of each of his councillors in turn, rather than having them debate with one another: ‘every man’s opinion and sentence was thoroughly and quietly heard, without interruption or altercation’.16 Alexander, too, is noted for his hatred of flattery.17 Like Darius, Alexander is a pagan king presented as having Christian qualities, in this case being receptive to Christianity, reading Christian books, venerating the image of Christ and being monotheistic.18 Elyot, as his most recent editor notes, calls his life of Alexander a speculum: ‘all his life is a wonderful mirror’, expressed directly to governors, ‘whereby they may shape all their proceedings’.19 The author of Daryus may have drawn on The Image and on others of Elyot’s works in creating his idealised Persian king. Elyot’s The Boke Named the Governour, for example, uses the dialogue form to consider the proper means for both giving and receiving counsel, showing that the best form of counsel that a king can be given is honest and wise, and that he should receive it openly and gratefully. Daryus dramatises this ideal relationship between counsellor and ruler, and shows the alternatives. In Daryus, two of the courtiers who enter the debate seek to flatter the king, speaking in favour of the power of wine and regal authority in order to appeal directly to his interests, whereas ‘the honest courtier, Zorobabell,

16 Thomas Elyot, The Image of Governance, in The Image of Governance and Other Dialogues of Counsel (1533–1541), ed. by David R. Carlson (Cambridge: MHRA, 2018), p. 203. 17 Elyot, The Image of Governance, p. 208. 18 Elyot, The Image of Governance, p. 249. 19 Elyot, The Image of Governance, pp. 10–11.

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praises the power of love both earthly and divine’.20 The commentary on the debate by the morality figures emphasises the desirability of avoiding flattery; Zorobabell, we are told, ‘remayned in Constancye and was still wyse; / And for flatery, styll he dyd dyspyse’ (H3v). Constancy refers to flatterers as being ‘cruelly abhorred […] They went about by flatery, but yet did they mis’ (H3v). Honest counsel was the theme of other interludes which engaged with the question of how humanists may influence politics through counsel. Thomas Elyot’s own Pasquil the Playne, which followed shortly after The Governour in 1533, is concerned with the rhetoric of counsel and how to influence politics as a humanist. Pasquil advocates for ‘plain, fearless speech, as opposed to flattery’, a rhetoric which is also adopted by Zorobabell in Daryus.21 The issue of the role of counsel in governance was particularly pressing in the mid-1560s; the author of Daryus and other dramatists of the 1560s returned to the same matters that had occupied Elyot in the 1530s when thinking about the question of counsel for Elizabeth I in the 1560s. In this context, the focus of the play’s interest in dramatising counsel is not only Daryus but Zorobabbel. Zerubbabel in the Bible is a descendant (perhaps grandson or nephew) of Jehoiachin, the last king of Jerusalem; he was also an ancestor to both Mary and Joseph.22 In the Book of Ezra, he is described as the governor of the Persian Province of Judah and a descendant of David who would build the second temple after the Babylonian captivity; Zerubbabel is thus both a titular and hereditary political leader.23 In the Books of Haggai and Zechariah, Zerubbabel became a focus of messianic aspiration for those prophets, and his portrayal in Haggai makes him an especially interesting figure to stage before Elizabeth. At 2 Haggai verse 22, God directly addresses Zerubbabel, calling him ‘my servant’, a title which is frequently used in the Bible for kings.24 20 David Riggs, Shakespeare’s Heroical Histories: Henry VI and Its Literary Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 53. 21 Arthur Walzer, ‘Rhetoric of Counsel in Thomas Elyot’s Pasquil the Playne’, Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, 30.1 (2012), 1–21. 22 Margaret Christian, Spenserian Allegory and Elizabethan Biblical Exegesis: A Context for The Faerie Queene (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), p. 89. 23 David L. Petersen, Haggai and Zechariah 1–8: A Commentary (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1984), p. 97. 24 For example: 2 Samuel 7:5; Psalms 132:10; 1 Kings 11:32, 36; 1 Chronicles 17:4; Isaiah 37:35. See Petersen, Haggai and Zechariah 1–8, p. 103.

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(The Book of Ezekiel makes reference to a future Davidic heir as king, who will be known as a servant.)25 Zerubbabel is also referred to as God’s ‘signet ring’, an item often used in the Bible, and of course elsewhere, to signify royal authority.26 The presence of Zorobabbel reminds us that Darius is not the only king in the interlude bearing this name. Zerubbabel is also, if not a ruling king in name, then a leader whom the Elizabethan audience would have associated with kingship through his biblical representation. In Daryus, Zorobbabel can also be seen as a potential focus of interest for Elizabeth. One way in which this interest may have been focused is via Zorobbabel’s function as a reminder of the covenant between queen and Protestant faith. As Kaufman explains: When Zorobabell wins the debate at court among the courtiers by proclaiming that women and the king are the most powerful forces in the universe and praising God, he proves his steadfastness in remembering the spiritual gift of the Temple and thereby calls upon Daryus’ constancy and charity in returning to the covenant he made.27

Zorobabell calls on Daryus to remember his former promise: ‘Remember now thy promise Made to mee of late, […] Whych thou promysed vnto mee When thou camest into thy kingdome […] Ierusalem thou dydst promise […] Thy mind was to build the Temple a gaine / which the Edomits brent without faine’ (H2v). Kaufman reminds us that ‘[i]n Elizabethan terms, the work is to “remember” “to build the Temple a gaine” and fully “Restore” England to the Protestant faith, an act rhetorically framed as a promise, or a type of covenant, between ruler and her people rather than a legalistic compromise’. As she points out, ‘the trope of rebuilding the temple is often read in terms of its typological application of Jewish history and the Protestant cause, with implications for ecumenical unity’.28 As the biblical context given above shows, Zorobabell may also have been politically interesting as a potential ruler: ‘the Hebrew Bible hints at the possibility that, during the period of rebellion and instability which 25 Ezekiel 34:23; 37:24, 25. 26 Petersen, Haggai and Zechariah 1–8, p. 104. 27 Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’, p. 48. 28 Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’, p. 64, p. 49.

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followed the accession to the throne of Darius I […] there was intrigue in Judah, planning to throw off the Persian yoke and make Zerubbabel […] king’.29 Furthermore, there is evidence that the reference to ‘Zorobabell’ in Daryus would call to mind previous direct comparisons made between Zerubbabel and Elizabeth herself. The introductory epistle addressed to Elizabeth printed in the Geneva Bible of 1560 draws a prolonged parallel between Zerubbabel and Elizabeth which is worth quoting at length: When Zerubbabel went about to builde the material Temple, accordyng to the commandement of the Lord, what difficulties and stayes (Ezra 4.) daily arose to hinder his worthy indeuours, the bookes of Ezza and Esdras playnely witnesse: how that not onely he and the people of God were sore molested with (1 Esdr. 2.16.) forein aduersaries [whereof some maliciously (Ezra 4.7.) warred against them, and corrupted the Kings officers: and others craftely practised vnder (Ezra 4.2.) pretence of religion] but also at home with domesticall enemies, as (Nehem. 6.10.) false Prophetes, (Nehem. 6.18.) craftie worldlings, faint-hearted soldiers, and (Nehem. 5.1.) oppressors of their brethren, who aswell by false doctrine and lyes, as by subtil counsel, cowardies, and extortion, discouraged the heartes almoste of all: so that the Lords worke was not only interrupted and left of for (Iohn 2.20.) a long tyme, but scarcely at the length with great labour and danger after a (Ezra 3.12.) sort broght to passe. Whiche thing when we weighe a right, and consider earnestly how muche greater charge God hath laid vpon you in makyng you a builder of his spirituall Temple, we can not but partely feare, (2 Cor. 2.11.) knowing the crafte and force of Satan our spiritual enemie, and the weakenes and vnabilitie of this our nature: and partely be feruent in our prayers toward God that he wolde bryng to perfection this noble worke whiche he hathe begon by you: and therefore we indeuour our selues by all meanes to ayde, and to bestowe our whole force vnder your graces standard, whome God hath made as our Zerubbabell for the erectyng of this moste excellent Temple, and to plant and maynteyn his holy worde to the aduancement of his glorie, for your owne honour and saluation of your soule, and for the singuler comfort of that great flocke which Christ Iesus the (Ebr. 13.20.) great shepherd hath boght with his (1 Pet. 1.19.) precious blood, and committed vnto your charge to be fed both in body and soule.30

29 Adrian Curtis, ed., Oxford Bible Atlas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 47. 30 ‘To the most vertuous and noble Qvene Elisabet’, The Bible and Holy Scriptures conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament. Translated according to the Ebrue and Greke,

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The comparison between Zerubbabel and the queen does not merely draw attention to a passing similarity between their positions, but undertakes a detailed and thorough comparison of the two, with the purpose of forcefully reminding Elizabeth of her covenant to continue the reformation of the church. It also makes a claim for the role of the queen’s subjects in helping her to achieve that object: the authors avow that they ‘indeuour our selues by all meanes to ayde, and to bestowe our whole force vnder your graces standard, whome God hath made as our Zerubbabell ’ (emphasis mine). One of the means through which they can ‘ayde’ the queen is through the provision of good counsel, to combat the false counsel from which Zerubbabel and his people suffered: ‘false doctrine and lyes, as by subtil counsel, cowardies, and extortion’. As Cameron Alexander MacKenzie suggests, the fact that the queen’s own printer produced in the 1570s small folio Bibles which reprinted the text of the introductory epistle suggests Elizabeth was not averse to ‘the role sketched out for her in this introduction of being England’s “Zerubbabel” and of restoring true Christianity to the land’.31 Whether or not Elizabeth was known to approve of the comparison in 1565, the dramatisation of Zerubbabel’s counsel in an interlude performed shortly after the first editions of the Geneva Bible must surely have called to mind this dedicatory letter to Elizabeth and the audience. Rather than figuring as Darius, the Persian king who ruled over the Jewish people, Elizabeth may have found a better fit in Zorobabell, the wise ruler who remembers his covenant and is considered to be a rightful king both by hereditary and, crucially, by divine sanction, as God’s servant and signet-ring. The signet, in the Bible as at Elizabeth’s own court, represented a monarch’s power and authority, divinely given; Zerubbabel, God’s own signet,

and conferred with the best translations in diuers languges. With moste profitable annotations vpon all the hard places, and other things of great importance as may appeare in the epistle to the reader (Geneva, 1560), [n.s.]. 31 Cameron Alexander MacKenzie, The Battle for the Bible in England, 1557–1582 (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), p. 122. Thomas Fulton and Kristen Poole also use the example of Elizabeth as Zerubbabel as an indicator of how during this period the Bible ‘became a lived concern, and readers were trained to view their lives through biblical precedents’, in their introduction to The Bible on the Shakespearean Stage: Culture of Interpretation in Reformation England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 5.

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was a powerful metaphor for the divine sanction of monarchy.32 Thus, in Darius, Persia’s role in the play’s biblical exegesis is a vital one; like Hester, this is a re-reading of a Persian biblical narrative for its Elizabethan audience. Daryus and Zorobabell are a dramatisation of both successful counsel and the importance of adhering to promises to rebuild Jerusalem or continue the reformation of the church.

Cambises Darius and Hester both explore the role of counsel in governance and within monarchy in particular by reimagining the relationships between monarch and council, dramatising the processes of counsel, and offering themselves as forms of advice literature to Elizabeth. This dramatic interest in counsel is also evident in Thomas Preston’s Cambises , first printed in 1569 and most likely first performed around 1560,33 which rewrites the story of a classical Persian monarch, Cambyses II, in the context of Tudor politics. This monarch just about qualifies as biblical, as Cambyses II is briefly mentioned in the Book of Daniel, but the main source for Preston’s play is a story from Herodotus’ Histories (c. 425 BCE), and information given in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia (c. 360 BCE),34 mediated through Richard Taverner’s The Garden of Wisdom, printed in two parts in 1539. As we have seen, the Bible was not the only important source of information and stories about Persia in the sixteenth century. An equally important context is provided by the Greek sources, notably the works of Herodotus and Xenophon, which were disseminated to the English audience not only in translation but also via English texts which included or adapted their material. Entertainments which drew on these sources presented complicated and challenging views of classical Persia for contemporary audiences. The title page of The Garden of Wisdom describes it as containing ‘pleasaunt floures, that is to saye, propre and

32 Interesting within this context is Zorobabell’s statement that women are strong due

to the power that they exert over men, another perspective which would appear to appeal directly to Elizabeth’s own position. 33 See Eugene D. Hill, ‘The First Elizabethan Tragedy: A Contextual Reading of Cambises ’, Studies in Philology, 89.4 (1992), 404–33. 34 For the date of the Cyropaedia, see Deborah Levine Gera, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia: Style, Genre, and Literary Technique (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 25.

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quicke sayinges of Princes, Philosophers, and other sortes of men’.35 Taverner offers his book to the general reader as a form of beneficial entertainment, ‘in which to recreate your selfes, it shalbe as I iudge no les profytable, then pleasaunt vnto you’.36 The printed text of Cambises also begins by establishing its value to the reader, here with a Prologue which places the text firmly within the advice-to-princes tradition by drawing on a number of classical philosophers who were known to have advised kings. The first mentioned is Agathon, the Greek poet and dramatist who lived for a time at the court of Archelaus in Macedonia, ‘he whose counsaile wise, to princes wele extended; / By good advice unto a Prince iii things he hath commended…’.37 The three pieces of advice are given as follows: First, is that he hath gouernment and ruleth ouer men: Secondly, to rule with lawes, eke Iustice (saith he) then. Thirdly, that he must wel conceiue, he may not alwaies reign. (ll. 3–5)

Agathon’s advice as presented in Cambises emphasises the constrained nature of a monarch’s rule: it is temporary, and it must be exercised through a system of laws, rather than a king’s individual will or arbitrary decisions. The Prologue then turns to the Roman philosophers ‘Tully’ (Cicero) and Seneca, drawing on the ‘sapience’ of both men to underline firstly the power of a king, who is ‘of him self, a plain and speaking law’, and also the importance of monarchs’ ‘honest exercise’ of their kingship, which will lead to the same behaviour from their people (ll. 7, 9, 12). This advice to sovereigns finishes with a warning which calls to mind a further constraint upon ruler, i.e. the state of their future reputation: ‘if that a King, abuse his kingly seat: / His ignomy and bitter shame, in fine shalbe more great’ (ll. 13–14). The advice given to kings with which the printed version of the play opens thus recognises the restrictions on a monarch’s power via the system of law and the effects of a 35 Richard Taverner, The Garden of Wysedome (1539), title page, A1r. 36 Taverner, The Garden of Wysedome, A1v. 37 Thomas Preston, A lamentable tragedy mixed ful of pleasant mirth, conteyning the life of CAMBISES king of PERCIA (1569), ed. by Robert Carl Johnson as A Critical Edition of Thomas Preston’s Cambises (Salzburg: Universität Salzburg, 1975), ll. 1–2. All further quotations will be from this edition and will be given in parentheses in the text.

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monarch’s rule on his people and his place in history. This is the context through which the Prologue introduces Cambises, via his father ‘Cirus ’, who is celebrated in the Cyropaedia as an idealised king.38 The historical Cambyses II ruled Persia from 530 until his death in 522 BCE, rather longer than the barely two years of reign accorded to him by the prologue (l. 33). Although Cambyses II extended the Persian empire into Egypt, he was not renowned as one of the great Persian monarchs.39 The Prologue describes him as having had a good education, but then having forgotten ‘his perfect race before’, choosing instead a life of vice (l. 20, 21). Cambyses is compared to Icarus, firstly in that he ‘warning then did hate’ and secondly in that ‘at the last a fall he took’ (l. 22, l. 24). From his first introduction, then, Cambyses is associated with vice that is exacerbated by a failure to heed counsel and ends in tragedy. It is this failure which characterises Cambyses’ reign in Persia during the events described in Preston’s play, and which places Cambises within the de casibus tradition, a genre of tragedy which offers ‘moral lessons about the dire consequences of pride and ambition through recounting […] the falls of those in high places’.40 The play Cambises, or a version of it, was likely first performed by the Earl of Leicester’s Men at Court for the Christmas season of 1560–1561 and printed in 1569 or 1570.41 Charles Edelman concludes that the play ‘must have been very popular—Pollard and Redgrave’s Short-Title Catalogue shows three printings, ca. 1570, 1585, and 1595, unusual for such

38 Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, pp. 8–9. 39 Encyclopaedia Iranica: ‘Classical authors unanimously describe Cambyses’ reign in

Egypt as a period of violence, of pillaging temples, mockery of the gods and desecration of royal tombs (Herodotus, 3.27–29; Strabo, 17.1, 27, etc.)’. 40 Troni Y. Grande, Marlovian Tragedy: The Play of Dilation (Lewisburg: Bucknell

University Press, 1999), p. 21. 41 Bevington, From ‘Mankind’ to Marlowe, p. 60. The reference in the Epilogue to Bishop Bonner has sometimes been taken to date the play to after Bonner’s death in September 1569; by, for example, Frederick G. Fleay, A Chronicle History of the London Stage, 1559–1642 (New York: Burt Franklin, 1909), p. 64. However, it seems quite possible that the reference to Bonner could have been inserted after his death before publication or, more likely, that its reference to him in the past tense as having ‘never intended to doo any good’ (l. 1144) could have been applicable any time after his fall from grace during Elizabeth’s reign. Bonner was imprisoned in 1560 and spent much of the rest of the decade facing charges of praemunire for refusing the oath of royal supremacy on Elizabeth’s accession to the throne.

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an early text’.42 Around the time that this third edition was produced, Shakespeare was able to have Falstaff say of his impersonation of the king in Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV (c. 1597), ‘I will do it in King Cambyses’ vein’ (2.4.389–90), and expect that his audience would know whom and what he meant by it.43 Some scholars have argued that the use of the play by Shakespeare, and its reprinting in 1595, suggests that Cambises was in fact revived at some point in the 1590s, which may give added depth to a reading of this text in its contemporary political context.44 In the first edition, the author of the play is given as Thomas Preston; he is probably the Cambridge scholar who met Elizabeth during her visit to the university in 1564 and was eventually to become its vice-chancellor.45 If he is this Preston, then the play was one of a number of texts that he produced on the subject of governance; as a scholar, Preston also wrote an oration against the notion that monarchy was the best state of the commonwealth, which he performed before Elizabeth during that visit.46 Cambises is an example of a new, mixed genre of drama, which developed in the mid-sixteenth century, combining both tragic and comic elements; its title page announces it as ‘a lamentable tragedy mixed full of pleasant mirth’. The main plot of the play, as described on the title page, consists of the narrative of Cambyses’ fall from power, consisting of his ‘one good deed’ followed by ‘three wicked deeds’ and an ‘odious death’. After his victories against Egypt, Cambises orders the death of a corrupt judge, Sisamnes, whom he condemns to be flayed so that he may act as an example to others. When advised by his counsellor Prexaspes to cut down on his drinking, Cambises enacts a terrible revenge, shooting Prexaspes’ son through the heart in order to demonstrate his undiminished capacities. Later suspecting his brother, Smirdis, of plotting to overturn him, Cambises has Smirdis stabbed and killed, and then 42 Charles Edelman, ‘Preston’s Cambyses, King of Persia’, The Explicator, 65.4 (2007), 194–97 (194). 43 For more on this, see Edelman, ‘Preston’s Cambyses, King of Persia’. Thomas Dekker also sought to emphasise a point via Cambises in The Gull’s Hornbook (1609). See Johnson, A Critical Edition of Thomas Preston’s Cambises, pp. 33–34. 44 Johnson, A Critical Edition of Thomas Preston’s Cambises, p. 34. See also Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 121. 45 On the question of authorship, see Johnson, A Critical Edition of Thomas Preston’s Cambises, pp. 27–34. 46 Johnson, A Critical Edition of Thomas Preston’s Cambises, p. 30.

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orders the death of his wife when she mourns Smirdis. Finally, Cambises wounds himself on his own sword, a death which could be a ‘just rewarde’ for his ‘misdeeds’ or just bad luck: ‘mervels chaunce unfortunate’. Interspersed with these elements of the narrative are comic scenes peopled by, amongst others, three ruffians named Huf, Ruf and Snuf, and peasants named Hob and Lob, who comment on Cambises’ rule. The two threads of the play are joined by the Vice character, Ambidexter, one of a number of allegorically named morality figures, who encourages and comments on Cambises’ misdeeds. Through its portrayal of a king turned bloody despot, Cambises examines the figure of lustful tyrant which was to become familiar via the ‘raging Turk’ figure, and articulates the problems which are perceived to arise from absolute kingship when it is not regulated by the proper constraints. The play shows Cambises’ swift descent from kingship to inhumanity via tyranny, a journey which is characterised by his perpetual fault of not attending to counsel. This failure of royal counsel is due to both inadequate counsellors and the fact that the king expects his counsellors to listen to him and not vice versa. Like much drama of its period and type, Cambises has been the victim of considerable scholarly scorn,47 but the play demonstrates an active engagement with the politics of its age and a complex and nuanced response to the de casibus tradition, particularly through its representation of royal counsel. There are a number of ways in which Cambises rewards being read within the political context of the 1560s. It is one of a number of plays from this period which reflect, in the words of Dermot Cavanagh, ‘the apprehensions and anxieties generated by the great political question of the day: the resolution of the Elizabethan succession’.48 It also dramatises the problem of political resistance and the difficulties of resisting a divinely ordained monarch, a subject which had been especially pressing in the years of Mary’s reign, when Cambises may well have been written. Furthermore, it considers the issue of the monarch’s marriage in a manner which may have spoken to those concerned with the question of Elizabeth’s marriage, a question which became increasingly pressing from

47 ‘Among the Elizabethan plays regularly anthologized, few if any have been so universally derided as Thomas Preston’s Cambises ’; Hill, ‘The first Elizabethan tragedy’, 404. 48 Cavanagh, ‘Political Tragedy in the 1560s: Cambises and Gorboduc’, p. 490.

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1560.49 The play could also be read as a warning to Elizabeth about placing the pursuit of empire and attention to foreign dominion above national concerns.50 This chapter will focus on the aspect of the play which seems most directly to speak to contemporary anxieties, via its dramatisation of kingly counsel, its processes, limits and failings. Cambises opens with the entrance of the king, a knight and the ‘Councellor’; Cambises’ first words address his ‘Counsaile’, foregrounding the play’s interest in the giving and receiving of advice: ‘Attentive eares towards me bend and mark what shalbe sain’ (Scene I, line 1, line 2). Initially, Cambises’ attitude towards this figure is respectful, but his true attitude to counsel is more clearly shown in his response to advice when it is given. In this opening speech, Cambises asks for approval of his plan to better his father’s martial deeds, and his Council responds enthusiastically, with only one bromide: ‘Extinguish vice, and in that cup, to drink haue no delight. / To martiall feats and kingly sporte, fix all your whole delight’ (1, ll. 34–35). This, along with much other wisdom provided by Counsel, Cambises ignores. Typically, he asks his counsellors for advice, but either does not attend to their answer, or takes offence at good advice offered plainly. Thus, later, when he has slain a corrupt judge of whom his people complained, he asks his adviser Praxaspes: ‘Haue not I doon a gratious deed, to redresse my commons wo?’ (5, l. 477). Praxaspes agrees that he has, but again has one piece of advice to add: But now (O King) in freendly wise, I councel you in this: Certain vices for to leave, that in you placed is. The vise of drunkennes (Oh king) which dooth you sore infect: With other great abuses, which I wish you to detect. (5, ll. 478–82)

On hearing this advice, Cambises becomes enraged and only strengthens his resolve to take his pleasure in wine and women: Peace my Lord, what needeth this? of this I wil not hear, To Pallaice now I wil return, and there to make good cheer. 49 Susan Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I (London and New York: Routledge, 1996). 50 Cambises’ initial mistake is to want to better his father’s great deeds and widen his empire, rather than rule well at home, and this may have seemed a valid warning to Elizabeth, both when the play was first performed and especially during its revival in the 1590s.

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God Baccus he bestowes his gifts, we have good store of wine: And also that the Ladyes be, both passing brave and fine. (5, ll. 483–86)

In order to revenge himself on his adviser for criticising him, the king resolves to kill Praxaspes’ son, both to punish him, and to prove the falseness of his claim: Of drunkennes me thus to charge, but thou with speed shalt see Whether that I a sober King, or els a drunkard bee. I knowe thou haste a blisful babe, wherin thou doost delight: Me to revenge of these thy woords, I wil go wreke this spight. When I the moste have tasted wine, my Bowe it shalbe bent At hart of him even then to shoot, is now my whole intent. And if that I his hart can hit, the King no drunkard is: If hart of his I doo not kil, I yeeld to thee in this. (5, ll. 507–14)

He shoots the son and has his heart cut out and presented to Praxaspes in an act which typifies both the king’s capacity for brutality and his attitude to counsellors who fail to give the advice he wishes to hear. As the opening lines with which we began demonstrate, Cambises is a ruler who expects his counsellors to listen to him, and not the other way around: ‘My Counsaile graue and sapient with lords of legal train: / Attentive eares towards me bend & mark what shalbe sain’ (1, ll. 1–2; emphasis mine). Cambises’ lack of respect for advice is typical of a dramatic kingship which, like that of other “oriental” monarchs on the Elizabethan stage, is also characterised by a love of luxury and by the king’s absolute power. These qualities are demonstrated when the king delegates responsibility to another; on leaving for the battlefield, Cambises appoints Sisamnes, the judge who will prove corrupt, to rule during his absence. Sisamnes’ response is a vivid picture of how the benefits of rulership are understood, constituting not only luxury, ease and wealth, but also the power of life and death over the king’s subjects: Now may I weare the bordred guard and lie in downe bed soft, Now may I purchase house and land, and have all at my wil, Now may I build a princely place, my mind for to fulfil. Now may I abrogate the law, as I shall thinke it good, If any one me now offend, I may demaund his blood. (A4 r-v)

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The portrayal of kingship as involving comfort, richness and total power is not uncommon, but it is worth noting that the state of Persia is made vulnerable to it through its system of governance, both through the sovereign’s own rule and through his delegation of responsibility to a man who is unfit to hold office. At this stage in the play, Cambises is not a monster; to begin with, as we have seen, he does at least consult the opinion of his council on his intention to go to war with Egypt. Indeed, Cambises begins the play seeming as if he has the potential to be a good king, though he ends it ‘definitely horrid’; following his decree to punish Sisamnes with death, he ‘indulges in one wilful cruelty after another’,51 in fact becoming tyrannical directly through the failure of the counsel relationship. The Vice character, Ambidexter, suggests that Cambises was only pretending goodness all along: ‘The king himselfe was godly up trained: / He professed vertue, but I think it was fained. / He plaies with both hands, good deeds and ill’ (D1r). Ambidexter here echoes the Prologue’s judgement that Cambises was ‘in his youth was trained vp, by trace of vertues lore’, only to ‘forget’ this training once becoming a king. (As Patricia S. Barry notes, the notion that ‘one kind of moral character may be a transformation of another kind’, that the good may impersonate the bad and vice versa, was a common conceit in the drama of the period.52 ) Cambises demonstrates the difficulty of truly knowing whether any monarch is worthy of, or adequate to, the job; in his case, it is the failure of the proper functions of the relationship between king and council which has facilitated his descent into tyranny. This portrayal of Cambises’ faults shows a debt to Herodotus, who relates the story of the king killing Praxaspes’ son and shows the grovelling attitude of the court in having Praxaspes praise Cambises’ aim and skill at shooting.53 But Preston’s Cambises is different to the mad tyrant of Herodotus: his fault is individual sin, not madness or illness, or at least it is not explained in such terms within the play itself.

51 Patricia S. Barry, The King in Tudor Drama (Salzburg: Inst. fur eng. Sprache & Lit., University of Salzburg, 1977), p. 89. 52 Barry, The King in Tudor Drama, p. 90. 53 Waters, Ancient Persia, p. 55: ‘Herodotus next stops to seek the cause of Kamby-

ses’ madness. He leaves it open whether the cause was the sacrilege of against the Apis – an adequate enough explanation for the majority of his public – or a hereditary disease, epilepsy. But this topic is soon dismissed, and further alleged demonstrations are forthcoming’.

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As Dermot Cavanagh has explored, the principal source for Cambises, Richard Taverner’s The Garden of Wisdom (1539), offers in Cambises a type of a monarch who disgraces his office; Cambises, Cavanagh argues, like Gorboduc, teaches ‘by negative example’.54 Cambises’ failings are perceived as the result of sin, which, by implication, he should be able to control. Hence, scholars have frequently read Cambises within the ‘advice-to-princes’ tradition, seeing the text as offering the kind of example to the court advocated in A Mirror for Magistrates (1559), which stated that rulers should learn how to behave wisely and morally by looking into the mirrors provided for them by drama and poetry. Mirror, itself a highly theatrical text,55 whose audience included those involved in the business of ruling,56 went on to influence a later generation of playwrights who were interested in England’s past. Cambises was one of a number of contemporary plays that drew on the de casibus tradition via Mirror for their subjects. Such plays have often been read as ‘a stepping stone in the evolution of tragedy, a sort of lamentable missing link on the way to true tragedy’, although this does not fully account for the various ways in which they developed tragic modes of drama.57 One of the factors that highlights the significance of Mirror as an influence on Cambises is their mutual interest, shared with much de casibus literature, in ‘the relationship between nobles and their others, and how they should rule’.58 Cambises, with its focus on the relationships between rulers and those around them, and the question of how they should reign suggests a potential vision of governance as more inclusive and responsible, if only by the absence of that form of governance in Persia itself. The play, in dramatising the relationship between nobles and their others, engages with the de casibus tradition via Mirror for Magistrates to explore models

54 Cavanagh, ‘Political Tragedy in the 1560s: Cambises and Gorboduc’, p. 490. 55 Paul Budra, A Mirror for Magistrates and the de casibus tradition (Toronto:

University of Toronto Press, 2000), p. 41. 56 Harriet Archer and Andrew Hadfield, eds, A Mirror for Magistrates in Context: Literature, History and Politics in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), Introduction, p. 5. 57 Budra, A Mirror for Magistrates and the de casibus tradition, p. 73. 58 Jessica Winston, ‘Rethinking Absolutism: English de casibus tragedy in the 1560s’,

in A Mirror for Magistrates in Context: Literature, History and Politics in Early Modern England, ed. by Harriet Archer and Andrew Hadfield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 199–215 (p. 201).

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of governance, associating tyranny with the inversion of gender roles in both comic and tragic modes. In doing so, it approaches governance in more complex ways than might first seem, including with regard to its use of Persia as a setting. In his own classical tragedy, Preston has drawn upon one of the most negatively portrayed periods of Achaemenid Persian history, in which Persia is mired in corruption as a result of absolutist monarchy. As Masood notes, Preston’s Cambyses is an important example of the negative images of Achaemenid kingship presented to early modern audiences via Herodotus.59 Persia is no longer the benevolent seat of reasonable kings, but a vulnerable state at the mercy of the will of tyrants. This reflects the shift from primarily biblical sources to those which are based on Herodotus’ Histories, which can in turn be distinguished from the version of Persia presented by Xenophon: The images emanating from Herodotus’ Histories are mostly negative, where ancient Persians are represented as cruel, despotic and tyrannous. […] The works that take Xenophon’s Cyropaedia as their source represent a Persia where honour and chastity are the core values of the culture and where kings rule in a noble and gracious manner.60

Persia provides a convenient situation for the play’s subject, because through Cambyses II’s reign it offers an epitome of that quality dreaded by all at the time: tyranny.61 In particular, Persia typifies the catastrophic consequences that tyranny can have on a state, even an empire as powerful as that of Persia, which, following Cambyses’ reign, was soon to diminish in size, power and influence. In this representation of Persia, the shift from biblical to classical stories is also significant: through its relationship to classical sources, Cambises can be read alongside other early English tragedies based on classical narratives and sources which at times engaged in anti-monarchic criticism.

59 Masood, ‘From Cyrus to Abb¯ as’, p. 7. 60 Masood, ‘From Cyrus to Abb¯ as’, p. 25. 61 See Rebecca Bushnell, Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the

English Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990). In Chapter Four, Bushnell discusses tyrant plays, including Cambises, in terms of how they function as both mirrors for magistrates and warnings to the populace.

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Jessica Winston has examined how A Mirror for Magistrates opened new ways for tragic playwrights of the 1560s, amongst others, to think about new models of governance. Winston’s reading of Gorboduc in this context provides a useful model for thinking about Cambises ’ place within the same tradition. Winston suggests that Gorboduc ‘invokes “mirror” language’ in order ‘to emphasise a more traditional de casibus theme, its corresponding audience and, implied, absolutist ideal for governance’ and seeming, in its presentation of a good king who makes a poor decision, to support the notion of absolutism in principle.62 However, she argues, the rest of the play: moves away from this address to princes, using the de casibus theme to show the limits of the model of governance implied in the de casibus tradition […] The larger issue is the very model of rule on which his kingship depends – the king and counsel alone cannot ensure a stable state, since this model allows the king, however well intentioned he may be, to make poor decisions when his counsellors do not agree, and often events outrun the ability of the king or his counsellors to keep up with the changing times.63

Cambises, too, invokes mirror imagery in order to demonstrate the limits of governance and potential failings of royal counsel. When Sisamnes’ son mourns his father’s death, Cambises advises him to interpret it as a warning to mould his own behaviour: Otian: What childe is he of natures mould, could bide the same to see His Father fleaed in this wise? Oh how it greeveth me. King: Otian, thou seest thy father dead, and thou art in his roume: if thou beest proud as be hath been, even therto shalt thou come. (4, ll. 465–68)

Otian’s response, however, gives a more pragmatic interpretation of the lesson to be learned from his father’s fate: ‘O King, to me this is a glasse, with greef in it I view: / Example that unto your grace, I doo not proove untrue’ (4, ll. 469–70). In his eyes, the important lesson provided by the mirror is to continue to please the king, not to avoid the sin of pride; it is 62 Winston, ‘Rethinking Absolutism: English de casibus tragedy in the 1560s’, p. 208. 63 Winston, ‘Rethinking Absolutism: English de casibus tragedy in the 1560s’, p. 209.

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the failure to manage the former action that will result in death. Under a system of absolutist kingship, the play suggests, subjects must curry favour with the king above all else. Cambises can thus be read alongside other tragic drama of the 1560s which took classical subjects and which, while they ‘do not seek to overhaul or eliminate the monarchist model, […] also do not endorse a traditional, narrowly absolutist model of political authority’.64 As well as exploring the inversion of the proper model of royal advice via a king who expects his counsellors to listen to him instead of the other way about, Cambises portrays the inversion of conventional hierarchies in other ways. This is undertaken most obviously through the challenging of gender hierarchies in the activities of the comic characters, Ruf and Snuf, the ‘disreputable’ woman Meretrix,65 and Ambidexter.66 On one occasion, Meretrix, the first woman to appear onstage, quickly starts a fight between Ruf and Snuf before physically beating them both, and causing Snuf and Ambidexter to run away in fear. The stage directions repeat that Meretrix must cause the removal of the men’s weapons: ‘Heere she must lay on and coyle them bothe, […] Snuf fling down his swoord and buckler […] she falleth vpon him and beat him and taketh away his weapon’ (2, s.d. at l. 272). When Ruf begs her for mercy, Meretrix equates his loss of his weapon with a lack of masculinity, mocking him for having been beaten by a woman: ‘Thou a Souldier and loose thy weapon? / Go hence Sir boy, say a woman hath thee beaten’ (2, ll. 275–76). When he pleads with her to return the weapon she has taken from him, Meretrix agrees to return it ‘If thou will be my man and wait upon mee’ (2, l. 281). The comic transformation of a woman into the winner in a street brawl with two men, and a ‘souldier’ into that woman’s servant, inverts the conventional gender hierarchy in a manner which allows obvious parallels with England in the early 1560s, with a new female monarch on the throne. Cambises’ relations with his wife also constitute an inversion of the usual order, not in the power balance between man and woman, but of 64 Winston, ‘Rethinking Absolutism: English de casibus tragedy in the 1560s’, p. 212. 65 Allyna E. Ward, Women and Tudor Tragedy: Feminizing Counsel and Representing

Gender (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013), p. 117. Ward notes that ‘The meretrix is a particular disreputable Roman figure, usually an ex-slave or a foreigner, who sells sexual favors but to an established group of customers’ (p. 144). 66 As Bushnell notes, the only characters in the play ‘who ever best the vice Ambidexter are the women’. Bushnell, Tragedies of Tyrants, p. 92 n. 41.

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the ‘natural’ law and conventions surrounding marriage between family members. On first seeing the Lady, Cambises is strongly attracted by her; so much so that he insists that they must wed, despite learning that she is his relative and thus conventionally ineligible to marry him: You issued out of mothers stock, and kin unto my state. According to rule of birth you are, Cosin jarmin mine: Yet doo I wish that farther of, this kinred I could finde. […] My meaning is that beauty yours, my hart with loove dooth wound: To give me loove, minde to content my hart hath you out found. And you are shee must be my wife, els shall I end my dayes: Consent to this and be my Queen, to were the crown with praise. (9, ll. 894–96, ll. 905–8)

The Lady attempts to resist the King’s suit on the grounds of natural and religious propriety: ‘It is a thing that natures course, dooth utterly detest. / And high it would the God displease, of all that is the wurst’ (9, ll. 910–11). Cambises, nonetheless, insists upon the marriage. Finally, the Lady says that she will agree to it, provided the King consult his counsel first: ‘Your councel take of Lordings wit, the lawes aright peruse’ (9, l. 925). This request that he heed the advice of his counsellors is immediately refused by Cambyses: No, no, what I have said to you. I meane to have it so: For counsel theirs I meane not I, in this respect to go. But to my Pallaice let us go, the mariage to prepare: For to avoid my wil in this, I can it not forbeare. (9, ll. 927–30)

The Lady then realises that she has no power to dissuade him: ‘O God forgive me if I doo amisse: / The king by compultion, inforseth me this’ (9, ll. 931–32). Cambises’ refusal to heed or consult his council constitutes a moral failing in both his governance of his country and his personal relationships. The play considers both the failure to heed council and the inversion of ‘natural’ hierarchies as the potential consequences of an absolutist model of governance in which the monarch’s word is law. The political aspect of Cambises has frequently been discussed, and an appreciation of the text’s political context helps to deepen our understanding of Cambises as political drama. Eugene D. Hill saw the play’s fear of the tyrant as being related to reign of Henry VIII and argued

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that its intended function is to motivate Elizabeth to carry on with her godly work, the reformation of the church.67 Given that the direct, open discussion of religion and politics in drama was not possible,68 public plays could not afford to be too specific in their handling of English politics. Persia formed a useful context because it had both positive and negative connotations, sometimes benign, as in Hester, and sometimes, as later dramas highlighted, tending towards that great evil of Renaissance kingship: tyranny, a recurrent topic of interest ‘in a land and time when the personal rule of the monarch was very real’.69 Rebecca Bushnell, discussing Cambises in her study of tyranny on the early modern stage, explores how the morality conventions in the play, such as the use of a Vice figure, ‘foreground the more deeply buried concern that the tyrant, who is fragmented into a multitude of theatrical reflections, cannot be controlled or eradicated’.70 In Persia, the system of absolute kingship means that the threat of tyranny is always present; in Cambises, that threat surfaces when a monarch fails to participate properly in the necessary relationship between king and council. As we have seen in Chapter Two, the late 1550s and early 1560s were a period when the question of royal counsel was especially pressing, as Elizabeth appointed new privy councillors and developed the privy council that would help her to rule. Elizabeth swiftly made a number of ‘swift and sweeping changes’ to Mary’s council, retaining less than a third of it to serve her.71 In terms of longevity, this was to be a successful and enduring council, consisting of a set of men who would remain her advisers for many years.72 But in its first months and years, this success was yet to be proved, and the relationship between monarch and council was arguably under some strain at Elizabeth’s new court. The queen’s will 67 Hill, ‘The First Elizabethan Tragedy’, pp. 404–33. 68 Susan Doran, ‘Juno versus Diana: The Treatment of Elizabeth I’s Marriage in Plays

and Entertainments, 1561–1581’, The Historical Journal, 38.2 (1995), 257–74 (257). 69 Norman L. Jones, ‘Elizabeth’s First Year: The Conception and Birth of the Elizabethan Political World’, in The Reign of Elizabeth I , ed. by Christopher Haigh (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1984), p. 27. 70 Bushnell, Tragedies of Tyrants, p. 80. 71 Penry Williams, The Later Tudors: England 1547–1603 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1995), p. 230; Wallace MacCaffrey, The Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime (London: Cape, 1969), p. 28. 72 Jones, ‘Elizabeth’s First Year’, p. 53.

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in forming this court was ‘unconstrained’.73 The functions and operations of the Council itself were not yet firmly established: ‘its corporate identity had emerged only rather slowly and quite recently, and its political importance had varied sharply under Elizabeth’s three predecessors’.74 Its power, however, was considerable, given its control over important areas such as finance and its supervision of the legal system.75 Stephen Alford has argued that Elizabethan political life ‘was conducted dynamically in a providential framework which forced councilors to take policy […] extremely seriously. They were obliged to offer sometimes painful and unacceptable advice, reinforced and advised by classical models of political behaviour and private virtue’.76 Christopher Haigh also notes the regularity with which the council was obliged to deliver unpalatable advice to the Queen in the 1560s.77 Alford points out that the tendency to see Elizabeth ‘as the master puppeteer of the court’ has sometimes prevented historians from examining the degree to which the Privy Council exercised power in the governance of the realm.78 When William Cecil described in 1563 the ‘council of estate’, ‘usually named a privee Counsell’ that governed England, he stated that it had the authority to ‘govern, command, and direct the publick affayres of the realme’ in ‘the lyves of the kynges or Quenes of the realm’.79 Privy councillors were committed to the best course of action for the commonwealth: ‘Preservation of the commonwealth was a duty, even if it involved upsetting the Queen, a point which the first decade of her reign made very clearly’.80 There could be tensions between their allegiance to the queen and this duty to the commonwealth. At the same time, Elizabeth was both reliant upon advisers who were not (or, like Robert Dudley, not yet) members of the Privy Council

73 MacCaffrey, The Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime, p. 28. 74 MacCaffrey, The Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime, p. 28. 75 Williams, The Later Tudors, p. 134. 76 Stephen Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558–1569 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 29. 77 Christopher Haigh, Elizabeth I (London: Longman, 1988), p. 69. 78 Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity, p. 31. 79 SP 12/28, fo. 68v, quoted in Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity, p. 33. 80 Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity, p. 33.

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and displaying a tendency to consult her ministers in small groups, sometimes declining to deal with her Council as a single body.81 The complex and dynamic nature of royal counsel in the first years of Elizabeth’s reign meant that the questions of how counsel should function, and the relationship between monarch and counsellors, both as individuals and as a group, were especially pressing at the time when Cambises was first written and performed, as ‘the boundaries of what Thomas Hobbes later called counsel and command’ became ‘a remarkably common theme in (and a significant comment on) the politics of the relationship between Queen and Council in the 1560s’.82 This is also true when we consider the political context for the play’s potential revival in the 1590s. By this time, Elizabeth was well known for ignoring the advice of her Privy Council, which by this time was meeting on a daily basis—a considerable burden of administration—and relying upon a council that was perceived to be severely restricted.83 Cambises ’ dramatisation of the weakness of a restricted council and the problematic nature of the advisory relationship can thus be read most profitably in the context of Elizabethan problems with council, which were ongoing during Elizabeth’s reign, but especially pertinent at the time of its first performance and possible revival. The Prologue of Cambises, as we saw earlier, presents the advice of Agathon the councillor as a reminder of the temporary and constrained nature of a monarch’s rule, and the importance of royal reputation; the drama which follows is an exploration of what happens when ‘good aduice [given] vnto a Prince’ is ignored (Prologue, l. 3). In the absence of an effective system of counsel, the play shows the inhumanity of a society without proper leadership in which the Vice figures gain control and the tyrant turns his attention to the accumulation of empire rather than domestic issues. In this context, Persia figures as an example of an empire in which counsel was not taken, and in which the uncounselled king quickly became a tyrant. Cambyses thus contributes to a growing trend in the 1560s and 1570s of using Persia as a convenient backdrop for examining potentially subversive questions surrounding Elizabeth, her rule and methods of governance. As a setting, Persia represents the threat

81 Haigh, Elizabeth I , p. 80, p. 81. 82 Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity, pp. 33–34, p. 34. 83 Haigh, Elizabeth I , Chapter Four.

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of tyranny, drawing on the audience’s knowledge of the next phase of its history: ‘Persian monarchy achieves stability under Darius then lapses into tyranny under Xerxes’.84 As Dermot Cavanagh has written, ‘one implication of this is that succession under absolute sovereignty does indeed appear to be a tragedy waiting to happen’.85 For sixteenth-century audiences, Persia contained a set of meanings which were not always in accord with one another and could even be contradictory, depending on the Persian monarch or period of history in question. During the first decade of the new queen’s reign, Persia was especially useful because of its reputed problems with royal succession and its widely known associations with tyrannical rule. In Kyng Daryus and Cambises, the particular area of concern is the question of royal counsel and its capacity both to be useful to, and to restrain, the absolute monarch, in order to prevent the threat of tyranny. By the end of the play, Cambises is transformed from a monarch prepared to ask for advice from his council to a tyrant who pays them no attention. In the Epilogue, the final words of the play offer a prayer for the queen and her counsel which places the threat to safety at a distance: As duty bindes us for our noble Queene let us pray, And for her honorable Councel the trueth that they may To practise Justice and defend her grace eche day, To maintain Gods woord they may not refuse. To correct all those, that would her grace and graces lawes abuse, Beseeching God over us, she may reign long: To be guided by trueth and defended from wrong. (Epilogue, ll. 15–21)

The play itself, however, understands the risk as lying much closer to home: it is the monarch herself who requires the proper restraint of counsel.86 In the absence of detailed contemporary information about Persia, plays such as Hester, Cambises and King Daryus invented imaginary Persias based on the versions of the Persian empire inherited from the Bible and the Greeks, and this imagined empire proved useful in exploring questions relating to English politics and governance. As Anglo-Persian 84 Cavanagh, ‘Political Tragedy in the 1560s: Cambises and Gorboduc’, p. 499. 85 Cavanagh, ‘Political Tragedy in the 1560s: Cambises and Gorboduc’, p. 499. 86 See also Ward, Women and Tudor Tragedy, p. 121.

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relations developed in the later sixteenth century, and increasing physical contact led to a much wider variety of information about Persia being made available to English readers, this tendency to create an imaginary Persia in which to explore England and its place in the world continued. As we shall see in Chapter Four, Persia’s material wealth was to become the focus of plays centred on another pairing of Persian tyrants: Cyrus and Tamburlaine.

CHAPTER 4

‘A Crown Enchas’d with Pearl and Gold’: Wealth and Absolute Rule in The Warres of Cyrus (Richard Farrant, 1576–1580) and Tamburlaine the Great Parts 1 and 2 (Christopher Marlowe, 1587–1588)

Introduction: Persian Gold At the end of the first act of Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great Part Two, Tamburlaine and his followers discuss the progress they have made in conquering lands throughout Asia and Europe, and the expected continuation of their glorious success. Tamburlaine anticipates possessing the riches of Asia and India, as he envisages that Orcanes’ defeat will provide him with ‘liquid gold... / Mingled with coral and oriental pearl’ (1.3.223–24). Gold, in Marlowe’s plays, is often linked to ‘orient pearl’, a product of the East, the ownership of which is equated with power.1 Michel Poirier has noted the plays’ ‘amazing exuberance’ as ‘gold, silver and precious stones are lavished everywhere’; for Poirier, the ubiquity of these riches allows Marlowe ‘to conjure up the barbaric East in

1 Bindu Malieckal, ‘As Good As Gold: India, Akbar the Great, and Marlowe’s Tamburlaine Plays’, in The English Renaissance, Orientalism and the Idea of Asia, ed. by Debra Johanyak and Walter S. H. Lim (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 131–59 (p. 146).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Houston, Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699, New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22618-2_4

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all its splendour’.2 In a recent essay on the Tamburlaine plays, Matthew Dimmock examines the association between the East, barbarity and material excess which Poirier’s comments suggest, arguing that the notion of an ‘Eastern’ barbarism ‘typified by material excess’ is in fact at odds with Marlowe’s representation of Persian and other empires.3 Excess in the Tamburlaine plays, Dimmock contends, may in fact suggest the opposite of barbarism: ‘These are not random catalogues of “eastern riches” but are designed to resonate in particular ways’.4 Gold, Dimmock notes, ‘features heavily’ in the Tamburlaine plays; it is ‘for Marlowe […] the global currency, sought after from London to Aleppo to Baghdad to Samarkand [… and] a key element of the actual exchanges between England and North Africa, as well as the Ottoman court’.5 Gold, and other precious metals, had long been an attraction for Europeans travelling east: for Ralegh and Hakluyt, the gold and silver found in the New World were the ‘fittest instruments of conquest’, and Columbus himself set out to find ‘India’ and ‘to seek gold’, a resource which continued to be associated with India and the Indies in travel writing of the sixteenth century. In the later sixteenth century, gold was especially associated with South Asia rather than exclusively the Americas, and early modern travellers were notoriously fascinated with the acquisition of gold and other precious metals.6 Persia’s connection with gold and wealth in the early modern English imagination can be positioned within a broader context of associating riches with the ‘Orient’. Nonetheless, Persia had a particular correlation with material wealth in the early modern period, as ‘the riches of the Persians’ became a byword for material prosperity and abundance. Indeed, if Persia was associated in the sixteenth-century dramatic imagination with tyranny and impending political tragedy, as explored in the previous chapter, its other most widely celebrated characteristic was material wealth. The Renaissance inherited from the Greeks the visual imagery of Persians literally glistening with gold. Herodotus’ description

2 Michel Poirier, Christopher Marlowe (London: Chatto and Windus, 1951), p. 112. 3 Matthew Dimmock, ‘New Directions: Retooling Timür’, in Tamburlaine: A Critical

Reader, ed. by David McInnis (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), pp. 147–66 (p. 157). 4 Dimmock, ‘New Directions: Retooling Timür’, p. 157. 5 Dimmock, ‘New Directions: Retooling Timür’, p. 158. 6 Malieckal, ‘As Good As Gold’, p. 135, p. 136, p. 131.

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of the battle of Marathon, for example, depicts a Persian army decorated not only with gilt weapons and armour, but also golden necklaces and bracelets, as Persian troops ‘adorned themselves with more personal wealth than was customary for the Greek hoplite’.7 Any opportunities the Greeks had to plunder the Persians during the wars added to ‘the developing mythology of Oriental wealth’, given that Herodotus reported that the plunder included huge quantities of gold.8 Later accounts by Xenophon also built an image of the Persians as rich to the point of excess, manifested in their display of gold, with their golden campaign tents, armour and horse-trappings.9 Accounts from others such as Diodorus Siculus about the wealth of Persia and the status of Persepolis as the richest city in the world strengthened the perception that Persians both possessed and displayed their wealth, and especially their gold.10 By the time that Marlowe was recreating Tamburlaine for the theatre, the riches of the Persians were part of English idiom. Commentators on classical Persia frequently referred to the wealth of that empire, as in this comparison of classical to Christian empires in The fiue bookes of the famous, learned, and eloquent man, Hieronimus Osorius (1576): The ritches of the Persians are cleane consumed, the mighty powre of the Grecians is vtterlye ouerturned, the Empire of the Romaines is beaten downe, & hath had a great fall. All thinges that eyther are, haue bene, or hereafter shall haue beinge, after one sorte or other shall perishe and come to nothinge at the length: but the kingedom of Christe with all goodly ornaments enritched, worlde without ende shall florishe, and shall abound with immortall and euerlastinge glorye.11

Matthieu Beroald’s description of classical Persia also took the wealth of Persia and its monarchs for granted, for example, in his discussion of the Book of Daniel:

7 Margaret C. Miller, Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century BC: A Study in Cultural Receptivity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 30. 8 Miller, Athens and Persia, p. 33. 9 Miller, Athens and Persia, p. 36. 10 Matt Waters, Ancient Persia: A Concise History of the Achaemenid Empire, 550–530

BCE (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 141. 11 Jerónimo Osório da Fonseca, The fiue bookes of the famous, learned, and eloquent man, Hieronimus Osorius, trans. by William Blandie (1576), p. 2.

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Now concerning the Kings of Persia, who ruled these hundred & thirtie yeares, the place of Daniel which is in his eleuenth chapter and second verse, is of great vse to the vnderstanding of the truth: which is in this sort; Beholde yet three Kings shall stand vp in Persia, and the fourth shall be richer than they all: and when he is growen great through his riches, hee shall stirre vp all against the King of Graecia.12

Those who wrote about contemporary Persia in the late sixteenth century also gave prominence to its material richness. In The History of Trauayle in the West and East Indies, a collection of mostly Spanish and Italian travel writings edited by Richard Willes with Richard Eden and published in London in 1577, Persia often features as a notable site of wealth and, through its trade networks, having great potential for those who might wish to acquire it; one report notes that ‘there is more sylke brought into some one citie of Persia, then is of cloth brought into the citie of London’.13 The richness of Persia was a truism that would continue to be perpetuated in travel writings and associated literature well into the seventeenth century; one such example is Thomas Middleton’s entertainment on the Englishman Robert Sherley, one of the subjects of the next chapter. In this entertainment, Middleton repeatedly refers to ‘the rich Empire of Persia’ and ‘rich Persia’, also noting the adage that ‘Trauell is the golden Mine that inricheth the poorest Country’.14 By the time that Middleton was writing, it was also understood that Persia had declined in richness from a historical highpoint. A 1579 translation of Marco Polo’s travels, for example, noted that ‘Persia is a noble Prouince or Countrey, although it was much more in the old time, than it is at this

12 Matthieu Beroald, A short view of the Persian monarchie, and of Daniels weekes beeing a peece of Beroaldus works, trans. by Hugh Broughton (1590), p. 4. 13 The history of trauayle in the VVest and East Indies, and other countreys lying eyther way, towardes the fruitfull and ryche Moluccaes As Moscouia, Persia, Arabia, Syria, Ægypte, Ethiopia, Guinea, China in Cathayo, and Giapan: vvith a discourse of the Northwest passage. Gathered in parte, and done into Englyshe by Richarde Eden. Newly set in order, augmented, and finished by Richarde Willes (1577), p. 335, p. 332. 14 Thomas Middleton, Sir Robert Sherley, sent ambassadour in the name of the King of Persia (1609), p. 8, p. 3.

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present, for it was destroyed by the Tartars’.15 Nonetheless, Persia’s material richness was taken in the later sixteenth century as an established fact, fitting within a broader notion of the Islamic world and Islamic culture as possessing ‘dazzling wealth.’16 The accepted fact of Persian wealth was to prove useful to playwrights of that period in a number of ways. Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, with his love of gold and tremendous drive for power, and the progress of his empire through Asia, has become a central figure for the exploration of the ways in which Renaissance playwrights negotiated the complex and competing range of Eastern identities that they encountered.17 Over the past thirty years, scholarship on Tamburlaine has examined how the plays engaged with, and drew upon, contemporary travel and its literature. Stephen Greenblatt suggested in 1992, for example, that Tamburlaine typifies ‘the acquisitive energy of merchants and adventurers, promoters alike of trading and theatrical companies,’ and John Gillies in 1994 discussed how maps and other documents of travel influenced the ‘imaginative geography’ of Marlowe’s two plays.18 Reading the Tamburlaine plays in a global context has shown that Tamburlaine’s status as the conqueror of Persia and his adoption of an increasingly Persian character as the action of the plays progresses particularly links him to Persia and its various identities in the late sixteenth century.19 The Warres of Cyrus, a play with a Persian monarch at its centre, also explores dramatically the construction of a Persian identity via a leader. 15 The most noble and famous trauels of Marcus Paulus, one of the nobilitie of the state of Venice, into the east partes of the world, as Armenia, Persia, Arabia, Tartary, with many other kingdoms and prouinces. No lesse pleasant, than profitable, as appeareth by the table, or contents of this booke. Most necessary for all sortes of persons, and especially tor trauellers. Translated into English (1579), Ch 13. 16 Gerald MacLean and Nabil Matar, Britain and the Islamic World, 1558–1713 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 22. 17 See, for example, Rebecca Bushnell, Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990); Dimmock, New Turkes. 18 Stephen Greenblatt, ‘Marlowe and the Will to Absolute Play’, in New Historicism and Renaissance Drama, ed. by Richard Wilson and Richard Dutton (London: Longman, 1992), pp. 57–82 (p. 58); John Gillies, Shakespeare and the Geography of Difference (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 53. 19 On Tamburlaine’s adoption of a Persian identity, see Linda McJannet, ‘“Bringing in a Persian”’, 246–47; Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, pp. 127–29.

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In both The Warres and the Tamburlaine plays, moreover, the attitude of the leader to riches dramatically represents the relationship between the monarch and his subjects in ways which may have resonated with early modern English audiences. The three plays use Persia to explore different ideas about kingship and in doing so dramatise different ideas about Persia, reflecting the shifting balances of Anglo-Persian relations, which form an important background to reading the texts in their Persian contexts. Broadly speaking, we can observe a gradual transition from an optimistic belief in the later 1570s that Persia might represent access to wealth and power for England to a growing disillusionment of that hope in the 1580s. In her recent chapter on the English traveller to Persia Robert Sherley, Nedda Mehdizadeh summarises the comparative enthusiasm with which English traders and travellers initially approached the prospect of the markets of Persia in comparison to those of the Ottoman empire. Travel to Persia ‘was imagined as less threatening’ than to the Ottoman empire, as ‘fantasies of ancient Persia inspired English monarchs and merchants to seek an exclusive trading agreement with Safavid rulers, an alliance they hoped would grant them greater access into India and China’. By the 1580s, however, England was agreeing to cease its efforts in Persia; in 1578, Queen Elizabeth I ‘redirected her attention to the Ottomans’ and entered into an Anglo-Ottoman trade agreement with Sultan Murad III on the condition that England cease its efforts in Persia.20 As England cemented its relationship with the Ottoman empire, it turned away from their neighbour and military rival, Persia. Thus as Matthew Dimmock argues, in Tamburlaine, ‘by focusing upon the Persian and demonizing the Ottoman, Marlowe crucially inverts the prevailing tenets of late Elizabethan policy’.21 The later sixteenth-century plays of Persia reflect competing attitudes of optimism and pessimism about Persia’s prospects as a potential ally and source of wealth and empire for England, while continuing to find Persia a compelling site of exploration of different models of kingship. Just as the plays considered in this chapter dramatise different relationships between a monarch and populace, and different models of political counsel, so they also stage different imaginary versions of Persia. 20 Nedda Mehdizadeh, ‘Robert Sherley and the Persian Habit’, in England’s Asian Renaissance, ed. by Su Fang Ng and Carmen Nocentelli (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2022), pp. 55–78 (p. 57). 21 Dimmock, New Turkes, p. 141.

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Within this shifting balance of Anglo-Persian relations, the question of the presumed date of The Warres of Cyrus comes under particular pressure. There has historically been a variety of opinion on both the date and authorship of this play. The standard edition of the play was produced in 1942 by James P. Brawner, entitled The Wars of Cyrus: An Early Classical Narrative Drama of the Child Actors. Based on a suggestion put forward by W. J. Lawrence in 1921, Brawner attributed the play to Richard Farrant and dated it to 1576–1580, arguing that that play ‘was presented at the Blackfriars either late in 1576 or in 1577’.22 Lawrence had identified a song in the library of Christ Church College, Oxford, which is assigned in the MS to Farrant, and involves a lament by ‘Panthea’ for her husband ‘Abradad’, which clearly links it to the content of The Warres. At this time Farrant was master of the boys of the Chapel Royal, and the 1594 title page of The Warres states that it has been ‘played by the children of her Majesty’s chapel’. This attribution would place the play at around a decade older than Tamburlaine, the first part of which was first performed in 1587. Writing in 1961, however, G. K. Hunter identified a number of stylistic parallels between The Warres and ‘the school of Marlowe’, including six instances of similarities between the texts of The Warres and Tamburlaine 1.23 This was sufficient evidence for Hunter that the play post-dated Tamburlaine; ‘otherwise’, as Abid Masood points out in his analysis of the question, ‘we would have to believe that Marlowe imitated the style of The Wars of Cyrus ’.24 This does seem unlikely, and more recent scholarship has tended to favour the later date and to recognise the uncertainty of the authorship.25 Nonetheless, while the parallels that Hunter identifies do demonstrate a proximity between Marlowe’s writing and that of the author of The Warres, they do not in my view constitute firm evidence that The Warres must have been entirely written after Tamburlaine. Indeed, some correspondences are more convincing

22 James P. Brawner, ed., The Wars of Cyrus: An Early Classical Narrative Drama of the Child Actors (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1942), pp. 18–19. 23 G. K. Hunter, ‘The Wars of Cyrus and Tamburlaine’, Notes and Queries, 8 (1961),

395–96. 24 Masood, ‘From Cyrus to Abb¯ as: Staging Persia in Early Modern England’, p. 43. 25 Ladan Niayesh dates The Warres at 1588 in ‘Shakespeare’s Persians’, although Linda

McJannet gives the earlier date in her chronology of plays of Persia in ‘“Bringing in a Persian”’; Niayesh refers to the text as an ‘anonymous history play’, whereas McJannet attributes it to Farrant with a query.

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than others. Both texts, for instance, include a reference to bowels being ripped with a sword, a turn of phrase which does not commonly appear elsewhere in printed texts of the period and would strongly suggest a relationship between the two plays. But Hunter’s identification of the phrase ‘I[t] passed so far the reach of human sense’ in The Warres with Tamburlaine 1’s ‘the highest reaches of a human wit’ is less persuasive.26 It is possible that another option offered by Hunter in his analysis might be correct. Hunter asks: ‘Was the original play rewritten in the period after Tamburlaine?’ He refers to this as ‘desperate conjecture’ in an effort to resolve the issue, and perhaps it is. However, it seems possible that a version of the play existed before the Tamburlaine plays, and that it is a song from that play which appears in Farrant’s papers, but that it was revised post-Tamburlaine—perhaps even as a direct result of the enormous popularity of Marlowe’s plays.27 In conclusion, like McJannet, I follow the earlier date for The Warres, considering it to have been revised after the performance of the Tamburlaine plays and before printing, and on this basis I judge that there is sufficient evidence to attribute the play to Farrant.28 This chapter will thus look at The Warres first, though recognising that the text of the play which we now have was most likely completed after Marlowe’s plays. Whichever play is earlier, it is evident that in the plays of Persia of the later sixteenth century we can observe two traditions developing: one which is broadly optimistic about England’s prospects in Persia, centring on an ideal-prince model of Cyrus based on Xenophon, and the other more sceptical about Persia, and generally broader and more imaginative in its portrayal of the ‘Orient’ world.

The Warres of Cyrus The figure of Cyrus was central to the representation of Persia and the Persians in early modern English literature. Jane Grogan’s work on the

26 Hunter, ‘The Wars of Cyrus and Tamburlaine’, 396. 27 Irving Ribner argues that the play is an ‘orthodox answer to Marlowe’s heresies’ and

that its publication in 1594 after the success of the Tamburlaine plays is significant. See R. Irving Ribner, ‘Tamburlaine and the Wars of Cyrus,’ Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 53 (1954), 569–73. 28 Nedda Mehdizadeh also follows Brawner in her acceptance of the earlier date and Farrant’s authorship; see ‘Translating Persia: Safavid Iran and Early Modern English Writing’ (PhD thesis, George Washington University, 2013), p. 14, fn. 9.

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reception of Cyrus, and particularly her 2014 monograph, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, 1549–1622, charts the ‘powerful fascination’ that Cyrus held for early modern writers and their audiences. Recent PhD theses from scholars such as Nedda Mehdizadeh (2013) and Sheiba Kian Kaufman (2016) have focused on how Cyrus served as an exemplary model of leadership in the period, not least in Farrant’s play.29 Such readings have opened up the ways in which Cyrus was seen as an admirable king who might be employed in order to encourage emulation in readers: through an imagined Cyrus in European literature, western authors call upon an eastern king, distinct in his pre-Christian religion but magnanimous and worthy of emulation in his laudatory biblical and imperial actions, to promote analogical thinking in their readers.30

Grogan explores the depth and breadth of Cyrus’ appeal for the early modern audience, in particular through the influence of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, ‘an engaging fictionalized biography of Cyrus’, in which the Persian king figured as the engineer and builder of the famed Persian empire. In various ways, Cyrus comes to stand in for positive aspects of Persia itself, ‘as the ruler responsible for instating the Persian empire by force of personality, will and good governance, his private qualities are made to stand emblematically as well as propadeutically for the public values of the nation’.31 The Cyropaedia is the main source for The Warres, which covers the Persian conquest of Babylon and the relationship between Queen Panthea, taken captive, and her husband, Abradates, King of Susa. In The Warres, Cyrus is presented as an idealised, just king, who brings peace and prosperity to his kingdom. In Kaufman’s words, the play: operates in the affirmative, in the idealized range of princely representation of practices […] [T]he Wars is a dramatized speculum principis, and the most multifaceted Elizabethan presentation of ancient Persia and

29 Grogan, ‘“Many Cyruses”’; Mehdizadeh, ‘Translating Persia’; Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’. 30 Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’, pp. 63–64. See also John Blakeley, ‘Marlowe’s Counterfeit Cyrus’, Marlowe Studies: An Annual, 3 (2013), 23–48 (p. 36). 31 Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 39.

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the potential for coexistence that it harbors— a peace founded upon a just, generous ruler such as Cyrus, who embodies the ideals of neo-Stoic cosmopolitanism.32

Cyrus’ role as a purveyor of justice is indeed directly related to his generosity in Farrant’s play, as the two qualities are seen as intertwined. Cyrus brings wealth and prosperity to those around him, as is manifested in the opening scene, when the victorious king dispenses the spoils of war to his soldiers, his opening speech commanding them to ‘triumph in the fortune of your hands’.33 The wealth that Cyrus distributes is not only that won in the wars, but also his own possessions. The gifts made from Cyrus’ own belongings attest to the great richness associated with the Persian empire; he gives to his supporter Chrisandas the choice of his two hundred horses and their trappings, an image which calls to mind the golden Persian army in the field: The bridles bit of massie silver wrought, The bosses golde, the reynes of Persian silke, The saddles all embrodered purple worke, Armde through with plates, with fine engraven golde, And golden trappers dangling to the ground. (1.1.32–36)

This feature is drawn directly from the description in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia.34 Persia was known for the fact that the king gave his own wealth to his soldiers. As Pierre Briant writes of the role of the king in the ancient Persian empire, the relationship between a king and his people as based ‘on the wealth of material advantages they received from him’, a fact which ‘did not escape the Greek authors, who were struck by the luxurious lifestyle of the king and his satraps’. Incidents of gifts from Persian kings to their supporters are consequently found in Herodotus and Diodorus.35 As well as manifesting Persian wealth, Cyrus distinguishes between kings who display their riches without themselves being truly strong 32 Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’, p. 65. 33 The Wars of Cyrus: An Early Classical Narrative Drama of the Child Actors, ed. by

James Paul Brawner (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1942), Act One, Scene One, line 12. Further references will be to this edition and will be given in parentheses. 34 See Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 39. 35 Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, p. 312.

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and worthy, and those whose material glory reflects their inner value; he describes his enemies as being like Croesus, ‘Glorious in shew, but cowardly in minde’ (1.1.22). While commanding the Persian noblemen to ‘glad our men with the fruits of our conquest’ (1.1.44), Cyrus avows his own intention to ‘sacrifice for victorie / And chose the holy aultars of the gods’ (1.1.41–42). His good qualities are equally demonstrated through his choice to give away wealth rather than keep it for himself: ‘none for me; diuide it all. / It pleaseth me to see my souliders rich’ (1.1.47–48). After Cyrus leaves the stage, the noblemen comment on this combination of virtue and generosity: ‘Cyrus himselfe, you see, refuseth golde, / And onely seekes to make his fellowes rich’ (1.1.63–64). Cyrus’ giving away of wealth is directly correlated to his other positive qualities and is central to the play’s portrayal of him as an ideal king, a portrayal which depends on his generosity and piety, exemplified in the avowal of Cyrus that: ‘of the sundry vertues that abounds, / Dayly increasing in [his] princely breast, / Religion to the gods exceedes them all’ (2.3.495–97). As Kaufman has shown, the idealised presentation of Cyrus in The Warres typifies the biblical and classical portrayal of Persia as hospitable to foreigners in a manner that enriches its own empire: Like his Persian predecessors on stage, Cyrus enlarges and enhances his empire through the aid of foreigners, emphasizing that in terms of hospitality, Persian monarchs repeatedly embrace non-Persians and in so doing enrich their realm through such diversity. The open door policy found originally in biblical and classical sources is thereby amplified in dramatic representations.36

The play’s emphasis on Persian wealth, and the dissemination of Persian gold and riches to the king’s associates, is dramatically useful in showing not only Cyrus’ good nature and exemplary leadership, but also the potential material benefits that may flow from a closer relationship with contemporary Persia. Both Kaufman and earlier commentators on the play, such as E. K. Chambers, read the portrayal of Cyrus in The Warres as a riposte to Tamburlaine at its time of publication. It is clear that any rewriting of The Warres after the success of the Tamburlaine plays is likely to have emphasised Cyrus’ positive qualities in

36 Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’, pp. 66–67.

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response to what is perceived as Tamburlaine’s comparative moral turpitude.37 However, it seems likely that this idealised portrayal of Cyrus via Xenophon also manifests the sense of optimism which abounded in the later 1570s about what Persia offered to England as a partner in trade and empire. In Farrant’s portrayal of the positive relationship that exists between king and people in Cyrus’ Persia, the play may even have suggested to its English audience the potential that Persia held as a political model for England. This potential is also focused on the figure of Cyrus himself. As Brawner points out, the focus of The Warres in not in fact on Cyrus as a conqueror. Although the narrative follows his military success and the action takes part mostly in his military camp, the play does not depict battles or the figures of defeated and humiliated kings, as does Tamburlaine. Rather, this leader ‘is gentle, compassionate and tearful, and his mind dwells on virtue.’38 In particular, though Cyrus is an absolute monarch, he rules with frequent reference to the counsel of his supporters. One example can be found in Cyrus’ response to Ctesiphon, who apparently comes to Cyrus for help after Antiochus has forcibly taken his daughter as a concubine (2.3.544–47). (This is a story which, as Brawner notes, is reminiscent of similar episodes in classical literature, but which is not to be found in the Cyropaedia.39 ) In responding to Ctesiphon, Cyrus emphasises both his own sense of caution—‘Cyrus is not rashly credulous’ (2.3.578)—and his habit of relying on counsel, as he turns for advice to Gobryas, another Assyrian lord, before making his own judgement (2.3.580–84). Ctesiphon’s report of Cyrus to Antiochus, who has in fact sent him to kill Cyrus, depicts the Persian king as a successful politician rather than a man of war: A prince he is farre from delite in blood, Milde, louely, vertuous, wise, and bountifull, Able to reconcile his greatest foes, And make great princes of his meanest friends. (4.2.1165–68)

37 E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), vol. 2, p. 41; vol. 3, p. 311; vol. 4, p. 52. 38 Brawner, The Wars of Cyrus, p. 11. 39 Brawner, The Wars of Cyrus, p. 26.

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In his dealings with both Persians and Assyrians, Cyrus is presented as a noble monarch who both attends to the advice he is given by his counsellors, and demands that they should meet his own high moral standards. When hearing Panthea’s complaints of her ill treatment, for example, he states that all his noblemen should uphold his code of virtue and honour: ‘Such as I am, such must my followers be; / Else let them packe; they shall not follow me’ (4.1.1039–40). When faced with choices in which he is obliged to prefer one nobleman over another, Cyrus falls back on impartial systems such as drawing lots, in order that the choice should be fair and unprejudiced.40 Even when he wishes to reward Gobrias’ servant Libanio for his faithful service, Cyrus is careful to emphasise that his gift of a golden chain not to be taken as a mark of personal preferment: the gift is an ‘honour to thy vertuous minde’ and not ‘a fauor to thy person giuen’ (4.1.1081, 1080). In a number of ways, then, The Warres offers a Persia in which English audiences may find positive examples of monarchy and governance, and in which the relationship between monarch and people is scrupulously fair, mutually supportive and mutually beneficial.

Tamburlaine the Great Parts 1 and 2 In The Blessedness of Brytaine (1587), Morys Kyffin presented the material wealth which had apparently flowed through England during Elizabeth’s reign as a testimony to her excellence as a monarch: When was this Realme so rich of glittering Gold, Of plated Silver, pearle, and precious stones ? […] Or more Concordant life, in Country and Towne, Then since her Regall Highnes came to Crown?41

The Blessedness of Brytaine was, in Peter Roberts’ words, a ‘loyalist effusion’, keen to do all that it could to pay tribute to Elizabeth, typical of the Protestant cult of the queen. Nonetheless Kyffin’s choice of image demonstrates how the metaphor of gold and material wealth could be employed in suggesting the benefits of a good monarch for the nation 40 For example, when choosing who should lead the vanguard of the army in Act Five, Scene Two. 41 Morys Kyffin, The blessednes of Brytaine, or A celebration of the Queenes holyday (1587), A3v.

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as it becomes ‘rich’ in precious metals during her realm.42 If The Warres shared with The Blessedness of Brytaine a tendency to portray the monarch’s provision of gold to the populace as symbolic of his or her excellence as a ruler, then Marlowe’s Tamburlaine plays were more sceptical and cynical about a monarch’s capacity to share material wealth, acknowledging the risk that gold, like power, may corrupt a fallible ruler. The process of becoming Persian, for Tamburlaine, is concomitant with the process of becoming a rapacious tyrant, for whom no material wealth is ever satisfactory. It is probable that the first part of Tamburlaine was also written in 1587, most likely in the autumn of that year, with the second part following soon afterwards; though the earliest datable performances of the plays are those registered by Philip Henslowe in 1594–1595, it is evident that both plays had been performed in the 1580s.43 Political readings of the plays abound, with Tamburlaine often identified as a Machiavellian absolutist, ‘responsible to no one but himself’, wielding ‘complete power’.44 Where Tamburlaine is compared with The Warres, the latter play has often been read as a reply to Marlowe’s Machivellianism: where Tamburlaine operates beyond human or divine law, The Warres asserts that ‘the governing force in the universe is the providence of God’; Cyrus is a virtuous king who upholds the orthodoxy, Tamburlaine an immoral tyrant who challenges it.45 More nuanced political readings may lead us to rethink this binary, particularly those which look more closely at Tamburlaine within the context of Marlowe’s republicanism. Tom Rutter has argued that the speedy overthrow of kings in

42 Peter Roberts, ‘Tudor Wales, National Identity and the British Inheritance’, in British Consciousness and Identity: The Making of Britain, 1533–1707 , ed. by Brendan Bradshaw and Peter Roberts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 8–42 (p. 34). 43 On the plays’ date and early performances, see David Fuller and Edward J. Esche, eds, The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 5: Tamburlaine the Great, Parts 1 and 2, and The Massacre at Paris with the Death of the Duke of Guise (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), xvii, xliv; David McInnis, ‘Introduction’, in Tamburlaine: A Critical Reader, p. 8. 44 Ribner, ‘Tamburlaine and the Wars of Cyrus,’ p. 57. On Marlowe’s political context, see Simon Shepherd, Marlowe and the Politics of Elizabethan Theatre (Brighton: Harvester, 1986). On Tamburlaine as Machiavellian, see Joseph Khoury, ‘Marlowe’s Tamburlaine: Idealized Machiavellian Prince’, in Seeking Real Truths: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Machiavelli (Leiden: Brill: 2007), ed. by Patricia Vilches and Gerald Seaman, pp. 329–56. 45 Ribner, 570–71.

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Tamburlaine Part One ‘seems to insist on the temporary nature of earthly rule’, as the movement of crowns on stage apparently opens up a space in which no king exists46 ; Patrick Cheney has shown us a Marlowe who is the first republican poet of the Elizabethan imagination.47 Reading Tamburlaine in this context reveals a play which is undeniably diametrically opposed in perspective to The Warres; Marlowe and Farrant both turn to Persia in order to explore the exercise of absolute kingship, but the Persias that they portray are vastly different from one another. If Farrant’s Persia is a place which may hold positive examples for English audiences to admire, and a mutually nourishing relationship between king and people, Marlowe’s Persia is more morally ambiguous, as Tamburlaine’s lust for wealth, power and empire is intertwined with his increasingly Persian identity. Nonetheless, Farrant and Marlowe are engaged in the same process, of imaginatively recreating Persia in order to interrogate models of kingship on the English stage. In both of the parts of Tamburlaine the Great, Tamburlaine displays an increasing desire for acquisition, both of power and of wealth. As Dimmock notes, Marlowe’s version of the historical figure of Timur departs from precedent to show a leader who is attuned to the ‘acquisitive energies’ that typified late sixteenth-century London, which has been termed by Joan Thirsk a ‘glittering center for consumer goods’.48 Numerous readings of the plays have drawn attention to their celebration of material wealth. Poirier, as we saw above, discusses the frequent references to richness in the texts, in which ‘gold, silver and precious stones are lavished everywhere’.49 Tom Healy notes the plays’ ‘lists of exotic places or gems, a picture of excess which combines space and wealth’, and Tamburlaine’s preoccupation with accumulation. In the Tamburlaine

46 Tom Rutter, ed., The Cambridge Introduction to Christopher Marlowe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 25. 47 Patrick Cheney, Marlowe’s Republican Authorship (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,

2009). 48 Dimmock, ‘New Directions: Retooling Timür’, p. 156, quoting Joan Thirsk, ‘England’s Provinces: Did They Serve or Drive Material London?’ in Material London ca. 1600, ed. by Lena Cowen Orlin (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. 97–108 (p. 97). 49 Poirier, Christopher Marlowe, p. 112.

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plays, ‘to rule’, Healy contends, ‘is to possess abundance’, and the plays explore ‘the possibilities generated by abundance’.50 Marlowe’s sources for the Tamburlaine plays also show Timur as a leader who became possessed of great material wealth, but they do not fully support the notion of a man driven to accumulate riches by his personal desire for them. Fortescue’s translation of Mexia’s account describes him as returning home ‘charged with infinite heaps of gold and treasure’, which he used to build a rich and beautiful city51 ; Dimmock’s assessment of the attitude of Marlowe’s sources to Tamburlaine’s accumulated wealth provides useful nuance, demonstrating that the sources tend to emphasise his ‘meagre beginnings and a consequent lifelong frugality and humility’, and to suggest that the spoils of war and empire are merely ‘an unsought and natural consequence of conquest’.52 Only one, Cambinus, portrays Tamburlaine as motivated by the desire for personal riches, ‘to the end that he alone might rob and spoil according to his own desire the whole world’.53 Marlowe’s plays provide a much more complex sense of both Tamburlaine and the riches that he pursues; as Dimmock says, the plays must ‘flesh out the material dimensions’.54 As part of this process, the link between Persia and material wealth is strengthened, as the possession of Persia as the pinnacle of political and material glory is asserted. Tamburlaine’s refrain of Part 1 Act Two, Scene Five, ‘To ride in triumph through Persepolis’, specifically associates the gaining of the Persian crown, ‘enchased with pearl and gold’, with both power and material gain (1 – 2.5.49, 50, 54, 60). In Part One, Tamburlaine’s disdainful treatment of riches suggests his greater care for his subjects and followers. At the beginning of the play, Tamburlaine offers his disregard for material wealth as evidence of the sincerity of his feelings both for Zenocrate and his supporters:

50 Thomas Healy, Christopher Marlowe (Plymouth: Northcote House, 1994), pp. 47,

50. 51 Dimmock, ‘New Directions: Retooling Timür’, quoting Mexia in Vivien Thomas and William Tydeman, eds, Christopher Marlowe: The Plays and Their Sources (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 89. 52 Dimmock, ‘New Directions: Retooling Timür’, p. 157. 53 Dimmock, ‘New Directions: Retooling Timür’, p. 158, quoting Cambinus in Thomas

and Tydeman, Christopher Marlowe: The Plays and their Sources, p. 130. 54 Dimmock, ‘New Directions: Retooling Timür’, p. 158.

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Disdains Zenocrate to live with me? Or you, my lords, to be my followers? Think you I weigh this treasure more than you? Not all the gold in India’s wealthy arms Shall buy the meanest soldier in my train. (1 – 1.2.82–86)

Wealth, to Tamburlaine, is functional, valuable in enabling him to dress Zenocrate ‘with precious jewels of mine own’, but not to be desired simply for the sake of amassing it (1 – 1.2.96). This disdain for gold for its own sake contributes to Tamburlaine’s strength; when Bajazeth asks that a ransom be asked for his release, Tamburlaine’s refuses on the basis that the money would mean nothing to him: ‘What, thinkst thou Tamburlaine esteems thy gold?’ (1 – 3.3.262). But Tamburlaine’s refusal of gold in the first acts of Part One is transformed during Part Two into a lust for gold which matches his moral degradation. Far from keeping gold at arm’s length, Tamburlaine now holds it close in ways which seem both grasping and grotesque, from his suggestion that his soldiers will drink ‘liquid gold’ (2 – 1.3.223) and that he himself will ‘ride in golden armour like the sun’ (2 – 4.3.115) to his insistence on keeping Zenocrate’s corpse with him after her death, ‘Not lapped in lead but in a sheet of gold’ (2 – 2.4.131). When Tamburlaine is offered gold by another prisoner, the Governor of Babylon, in Part Two 5.2, he does not scruple to send his men after it; rather, he commands them to ‘Go thither, some of you, and take his gold’ (2 – 5.2.61). As well as his increasing immorality, Tamburlaine’s rising lust for gold is twinned with his growing identification with Persia, a frequent point of reference in the Tamburlaine plays. At times, Persia seems to stand in for all of Asia, as when Cosroe declares: ‘The plot is laid by Persian noblemen […] To crown me emperor of Asia’ (1 – 1.1.110–12); at others, a distinction is maintained between ‘Asia’ and ‘Persian fields’ (1 – 1.1.44–45), as when Ortygius refers to the ‘Emperor of Asia and of Persia’ (1 – 1.1.169).55 At the beginning of Part One, Tamburlaine is clearly distinguished as not Persian: Theridamas: Where is this Scythian Tamburlaine?

55 On the association and distinction between Persia and Asia in the plays, see Lisa Hopkins, The Cultural Uses of the Caesars on the English Renaissance Stage (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 75–76.

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Tamburlaine: Whom seek’st thou, Persian? I am Tamburlaine. (1 – 1.2.152–53)

The association of Tamburlaine’s name with Scythia and its distinction from Persia is pronounced; as has been argued elsewhere, Tamburlaine’s Scythian identity is significant in placing him in the category of ‘barbarian’ and non-Persian. Herodotus’ retelling of the conflict between Greece and Persia in his Histories ‘is crucially framed by its speculations upon the nomadic barbarians called the Scythians’, who ‘express an absolute exteriority, their modes of life standing radically outside the confines of the settled state forms with which Herodotus is familiar’.56 However, during the course of the plays, as Matthew Dimmock has noted, Tamburlaine is closely and increasingly identified with Persia.57 He is called the ‘King of Persia’ (1 – 3.3.132), and his followers ‘Persians’ (1 – 3.3.165), for example; as Dimmock points out, he is even once referred to simply as ‘Persia’ (1 – 3.1.21) and ‘The possession of the Persian crown’ is figured as his destiny (1 – 1.2.91). Tamburlaine’s unstoppable acquisition of power and his growing identification with Persia are mirrored by the increase in his lust for gold for himself and his followers; indeed, Tamburlaine associates gold with Persia on various occasions, drawing on the familiar image of the glittering Persian army, ‘Their plumed helms […] wrought with beaten gold, / […] and about their necks […] massy chains of gold down to the waist’ (1 – 1.2.124, 125, 126). Marlowe’s association between Persia and wealth is thus tied up with Tamburlaine’s growing moral degradation. Initially, Tamburlaine holds a moral high ground as one who is not tainted by gold-lust; he is prepared to make use of it strategically, to ‘amaze’ the Persians when they approach his troops (1 – 1.2.140), but does not chase gold for its own sake. The Persians, in planning their battle strategy against the Scythian army, which reportedly outnumbers them, intend to use gold to trick the Scythians but, crucially, with the intention of retaining their material riches. Meander, advisor to Mycetes, king of Persia, proposes that the Persian soldiers should carry gold on to the battlefield which they will ‘fling in every corner of the field’, in order ‘to entrap these thieves / That live confounded in disordered troops’ (1 – 2.2.64, 59–60). The 56 Shankar Raman, Renaissance Literature and Postcolonial Studies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), p. 154. 57 Dimmock, New Turkes, p. 140.

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plans is that the Scythians, the ‘base-born Tartars’, will stop fighting to pick up the gold, so that the Persians, ‘fighting more for honour than for gold, / Shall massacre those greedy minded slaves’ (1 – 2.2.65, 66–67). Eventually, the gold will be returned to the Persians: ‘when their scattered army is subdued, / And you march on their slaughtered carcasses, / Share equally the gold that bought their lives / And live like gentlemen in Persia’ (1 – 2.2.68–71). In the Persians’ view, both the ‘base Tartars’ and themselves are motivated by the desire for gold. Their plan is unsuccessful, but, as David McInnis has shown, Tamburlaine and his men resist the lure of riches only long enough to defer their acquisition: ‘They win the battle, then collect the spoils,’ ultimately ‘consolidating future prosperity and acquisition’.58 Thus by the end of Part Two, Tamburlaine recounts a journey which has led him to Persia, to wealth and to avarice. In Part Two 5.4, when Tamburlaine charts his progress across the world on the map, he perceives this action as a movement towards Persia: ‘Here I began to march towards Persia’ (2 – 5.4.126). At this crucial moment before his death, it is the lack of potential wealth that Tamburlaine mourns; he has conquered land but not the gold mines: Lo, here, my sons, are all the golden mines, Inestimable drugs and precious stones, More worth than Asia and the world beside; And from th’ Antarctic Pole eastward behold As much more land, which never was descried, Wherein are rocks of pearl that shine as bright As all the lamps that beautify the sky! And shall I die, and this unconquered? (2 – 5.4.151–58)

His dying wish for yet greater acquisition of wealth through conquest typifies the continual sense of dissatisfaction which propels Tamburlaine’s drive onwards. His increasingly immoral acts in Part One alone—his treatment of Bajazeth and Zabina, his killing of the Damascan virgins and of Arabia—lead to ‘an inverse relationship between Tamburlaine’s accumulation of worldly goods and might and the playgoer’s positive

58 David McInnis, Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 56.

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response to his actions.’59 Justice, for Tamburlaine, ‘takes on an increasingly tyrannous and bloody aspect, though persistently in God’s name’, which ‘illustrates the difficulties which a doctrine of absolute submission might lead to in face of an arbitrary and incoherent iron rule.’60 Becoming Persian has for Tamburlaine been concomitant with becoming avaricious and tyrannical. Tamburlaine’s path to tyranny is marked across the plays by a growing tendency to ignore counsel, which is also typified at the moment of his death. Both Theridamas and Techelles advise Tamburlaine to stop railing against his illness, to ‘leave these impatient words’ and ‘Sit still’ (2 – 5.4.54, 64), but their counsel falls on deaf ears, as Tamburlaine’s ‘deathbed raging’ ‘violates the standards for a courageous death set forth in the death literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance alike’.61 Counsel and a monarch’s response to it are a central focus of Tamburlaine, and the Persian setting is an active component of this focus. As Ivan Lupi´c notes, Tamburlaine draws on Persian history in order to set the dramatic fiction in motion; […] it does so by relying on counsel as a means of creating dramatic character and producing dramatic conflict.62

The subject of counsel is placed at the forefront of the Tamburlaine plays by the efforts to which Marlowe goes to construct ‘in the early scenes of his play the character of a witless Persian king accompanied by a wise counselor’.63 Lupi´c traces the ways in which Marlowe’s presentation of Mycetes constitutes a satire of the incompetent king, ‘surrounded by competitors for the crown who are his superiors in both mind and body’. The contrast between Mycetes and the former triumphs of his heroic predecessors Cyrus and Darius, which are referred to in Act One Scene One (1 – 1.1.130, 1.1.154), ‘serve to make the point Marlowe 59 William L. Godshalk, The Marlovian World Picture (The Hague: Mouton, 1974), p. 135. 60 J. S. Cunningham, ed., Tamburlaine the Great (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981; repr. 1999), Introduction, p. 74. 61 Phoebe Spinrad, The Summons of Death on the Medieval and Renaissance English Stage (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1987), p. 139. 62 Lupi´c, Subjects of Advice, p. 113. 63 Lupi´c, Subjects of Advice, pp. 113–14.

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needs – that kings are great only because of their heroic actions and that these actions are the absolute and perfectly natural justification for the usurpation of sovereignty’.64 Mycetes is a rightful king, but a poor one; Tamburlaine’s usurpation of his power is thus justified. In contrast, Tamburlaine initially seems as though he will rule through a model of idealised friendship and thus counsel. He refers to his advisers Theridamas, Techelles and Usumcasane as ‘friends’ no fewer than seven times in Act One, Scene Two alone; he promises ‘by the love of Pylades and Orestes, / Whose statues we adore in Scythia’ that they ‘shall never part from [him] / Before [he] crowns [them] kings in Asia’ (1.2.243– 46).65 Patrick Cheney suggests that ‘the friendship of Tamburlaine and his followers composes a republican amity whose members will be materially rewarded at their campaign’s conclusion.’66 In the early part of the play, Cheney argues, Tamburlaine is presented as a republican figure of liberty, though he later becomes the republican enemy of liberty following his brutal treatment of Bajazeth and Zabina.67 The Tamburlaine plays, Cheney contends, ‘explode the Tudor myth of hereditary monarchy, the divine right of kings’.68 According to this reading, Tamburlaine does not become a tyrant in Part One, given that he ‘never fabricates a conspiracy, or operates by deceit’; rather, ‘quite remarkably, like a good “king,” he protects men in their rank, cherishes the leading men as “friends,” and considers them as much as he does himself.’69 Nonetheless, as Hunt points out in his analysis of Cheney’s argument, the implication here is that Tamburlaine does eventually become a tyrant, ‘a cruel totalitarian ruler disqualified from forming virtuous Classical friendships’.70 As Tamburlaine’s friendships break down, so does the idealised republican space in which rule by a group of friends seemed like a prospect. As Hunt demonstrates:

64 Lupi´c, Subjects of Advice, p. 114. 65 Maurice Hunt, ‘Friendship in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great’, Medieval and

Renaissance Drama in England, 33 (2020), 118–43. 66 Hunt, ‘Friendship in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great’, quoting Patrick Cheney, Marlowe’s Republican Authorship (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 101. 67 Cheney, Marlowe’s Republican Authorship, p. 97. 68 Cheney, Marlowe’s Republican Authorship, pp. 96–97. 69 Cheney, Marlowe’s Republican Authorship, p. 102. 70 Hunt, ‘Friendship in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great’, p. 120.

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When Techelles says that Tamburlaine’s three friends have fought with Bajazeth’s ‘contributory’ kings and acquired their crowns (3.3.214-15), Tamburlaine replies, ‘Each man a crown? Why, kingly fought, i’faith. / Deliver them into my treasury’ (3.3.216-17). Seemingly reneging on his promise to make his friends kings, Tamburlaine here seems bent on enriching only himself, especially since he immediately tells Zenocrate to take the Turkish crown and crown him ‘Emperor of Africa’ (3.3.220-21). Why, his three friends must wonder, does he not then crown them?

In their portrayal of a man whose gains—power, wealth, empire and a Persian identity—are entwined with his descent into tyranny, the Tamburlaine plays provide a cynical view both of absolute kingship and of the prospect of a republican dream of rule through friendship. Though Tamburlaine’s view of Persian kingship is so different from that of The Warres, Persia again provides a useful context for thinking about kingship through the figure of the tyrant.

Conclusion Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, as Meg Pearson has commented, is not often read as a guide for princes.71 Political readings of the plays, however, including Pearson’s, which understands them as an exploration of the political efficacy of spectacle and rhetoric, have demonstrated that they do offer suggestions of ways in which ‘Tamburlaine’s problems may be England’s’.72 One obvious application of this can be seen in the play’s focus on empire, but the plays’ interest in political power, and the relationship between a monarch and his people, is equally relevant. The political context of the 1570s and 1580s, in which some ‘scholars have identified in the action of Elizabeth’s councillors and especially in the Bond of Association subscribed in 1584, a “mixed polity” and even an imagining of the commonwealth without the queen’ and others have recognised ‘a more secular literature of political discussion and critique in Elizabeth’s reign that, drawing on the classics, praised republican virtues and constitutions as attractive alternatives to monarchy’, is clearly relevant

71 Meg Pearson, ‘The Perils of Political Showmanship: Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great ’, in Leadership and Elizabethan Culture, ed. by Peter Iver Kaufman (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 175–90 (p. 177). 72 Pearson, ‘The Perils of Political Showmanship’, p. 187.

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to our understanding of plays from this period which dramatise absolute power.73 In turning to Persia in order to examine the mechanisms by which political power is won, sustained and transmitted, Farrant and Marlowe constructed very different imaginary Persias, which grew from a shared understanding that Persia was characterised by its material wealth. The material richness associated with Persia in the late sixteenth-century English imagination is exploited in The Warres to suggest that Persia may offer English audiences other forms of wealth in its exemplary models for absolute rule; but in Tamburlaine, Persia’s riches are to be treated with caution.

73 Sharpe, Selling the Tudor Monarchy, p. 454.

CHAPTER 5

‘I Wish to Be None Other but as He’: Friendship and Counsel in The Travailes of the Three English Brothers (1607) by John Day, William Rowley, and George Wilkins and Contemporary Closet Drama

Introduction: Perceptions of Persia at the Turn of the Century By the end of the sixteenth century, Persia had a place in early modern thought that was distinct from that of the Ottomans or other Muslim countries, but as a location in the dramatic imagination it was both unknown and known, foreign and familiar, without a singular or stable identity.1 In part, this multiplicity is due to the variety of historical and contemporary writings about Persia, constituting a multitude of sources for the early modern playwright: the Persia of classical literature, of the Bible and of romance and, during the course of the century, contemporary Safavid Persia via European travel writing. In the second half of the sixteenth century, the quest for a north-east passage to Asia opened up commercial and diplomatic relations with Russia and with Persia which 1 Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 115, p. 148. On Persia having a distinct identity in early modern English thought as early as Tamburlaine, see Ghatta, ‘“By Mortus Ali and our Persian gods”’, 236.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Houston, Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699, New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22618-2_5

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brought Persia more easily within the scope of English travellers; both these relations and the quest itself were to help ‘bolster belief in Britain’s imperial destiny’.2 As a result of this quest, diplomats and merchants, such as Anthony Jenkinson, who travelled to the court of Shah T.ahm¯asp at Qazvin in 1562, were motivated to investigate possibilities of trade with and travel into Persia. Jenkinson’s map of his travels was first published in the 1560s,3 but his written accounts were not widely known until they featured in the first edition of Richard Hakluyt’s The Principall Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589). Hakluyt’s introduction to The Principall Navigations specifically mentions Jenkinson’s travels in Persia, in this context as a marker of Elizabeth’s greatness: which, he demands, ‘of [“all the [other] nations and people of the earth”] hath euer dealt with the Emperor of Persia, as her Maiesty hath done, and obtained for her merchants large & louing priuileges?’.4 Persia was known in the late sixteenth century via an increasing range of sources, and if classical Persia predominated as a source for English drama of the sixteenth century, then it began to lose its preeminence at the end of that century, being overcome by what Jane Grogan has called ‘the more stereotypical elements of a romance Persia— the wealth, the lust, the fabulous silks, the excess of it all.’5 The wealth of Persia, as we saw in the last chapter, was established in the sixteenthcentury English imagination through contemporary histories and travel literature, as well as via the romance tradition, which in the early modern period was ‘recurrently enlisted to imaginatively engage with Islamic lands and rescript their contemporary history along Anglophile lines.’6 2 Gerald MacLean, ‘East by North-east: The English among the Russians, 1553–1603’, in A Companion to the Global Renaissance: English Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion, ed. by Jyotsna G. Singh (Oxford: Wiley, 2009), pp. 163–77 (p. 166). 3 Joh. Keuning, ‘Jenkinson’s Map of Russia’, Imago Mundi, 13 (1956), 172–75 (p. 172). 4 Jane Grogan, ‘The Not-Forgotten Empire: Images of Persia in English Renaissance Writing’, Literature Compass, 7.9 (2010), 912–921 (915), quoting Richard Hakluyt, ed., The Principall Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (2 vols, 1589), sig. *2v. 5 Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 120. 6 Ladan Niayesh, ‘English Literature and the Ottoman and Persian Empires in

the Renaissance’, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature (Oxford University Press, 2022) https://oxfordre.com/literature/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001. 0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-1325 [Accessed 8 February 2023].

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Elements of these stereotypical elements of romance Persia can of course be traced throughout sixteenth-century plays of Persia, most obviously Tamburlaine, the first play to bring classical and contemporary Persia together.7 Until Tamburlaine, however, Islamic Persia was notably and perhaps surprisingly absent from the early modern stage. As Grogan has argued, the notable lack of representations of Islamic Persia on the late sixteenthcentury stage is most probably caused by the abiding influence of classical literature on perceptions of Persia.8 In the sixteenth century, the nascent awareness of contemporary Persia was simply overwritten by the images of classical Persia from Xenophon, Herodotus and the Bible; these images themselves strongly influenced how travellers encountered Persia, and how they recorded those encounters. In Grogan’s words: the most important source of information about Persia, at least within English literary culture (and extending to its plentiful mercantile connections with the London guilds) was the classical legacy of histories and ethnographies by ancient Greek writers and travellers and their later Roman mediators. Even the most influential travel writing, after all, relied volubly on classical accounts.9

Though the Tamburlaine plays were highly influential on the drama of the later sixteenth century, Tamburlaine quickly became folded into the type of the ‘raging Turk’ rather than developing a new, markedly Persian tradition10 ; and Persian figures in plays are difficult to identify as distinctly Persian. But plays of Persia were to increase considerably in popularity in the early seventeenth century, both via a group of closet dramas at the court of the new king, James VI & I,11 and due to plays such as the better-known The Travailes of the Three English Brothers (1607) by John Day, William Rowley and George Wilkins. Plays about classical Persia, indeed, were to undergo what Jane Grogan has called ‘something of a revival’ after 1603. These were largely Senecan closet dramas, performed

7 Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 126. 8 Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 126. 9 Grogan, ‘The Not-Forgotten Empire’, 914. 10 Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 135. 11 Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 137.

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at court or in private houses, which drew their plots from classical antiquity and, though they reached only small audiences in performance, were sufficiently popular to appear in print.12 This group of plays, including Fulke Greville’s Alaham (1600), Samuel Daniel’s The Tragedie of Philotas (1604) and William Alexander’s four Monarchick Tragedies , including Croesus and Darius (1602–1607), were written by men with links to James’ court for whom the relevance of Persia in exploring English politics was clear. Grogan’s analysis of the ways in which Persia was staged in early modern drama includes a useful overview of these Persian closet dramas, and explores the ways in which such entertainments constitute a form of ‘radical closet drama’ which engages with contemporary politics in ways that may seem not only radical but even seditious.13 It is evident, then, that classical Persia continued to play an important role as a means of participating in domestic political debate; this chapter will begin with a brief analysis of some such instances. But contemporary Safavid Persia also developed its presence in early modern drama, as it offered a compelling location for the exploration of England’s role on the world stage. In part, this interest in contemporary Persia was due to England’s ongoing renegotiations with both Persia and other Muslim countries, as early seventeenth-century changes in Anglo-Ottoman relations affected English attitudes to Persia. As Matthew Dimmock has shown, James took a different approach to the Ottoman Turks from that of Elizabeth. Long known for his hostility towards the Ottomans, James portrayed them as a nation of ‘faithles’ and ‘circumcised Turband Turkes’ battling ‘the baptiz’d race’ in the revised version of his poem on the Battle of Lepanto that was published for his coronation in 1603.14 In 1601, the king had written to Shah ‘Abb¯as I to praise his military successes against the Ottomans and hint at future help from England in these endeavours.15 The peace made with Spain in 1604 and the commitment to joint resistance to the Turk as the common enemy of Christendom showed ‘both to

12 Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 137. 13 Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 138. 14 James VI and I, His Maiesties Poetical Excercises at vacant hours. (London, 1603),

H3v, H2r, quoted in Dimmock, New Turkes, p. 199. 15 Franklin L. Baumer, ‘England, the Turk, and the Common Corps of Christendom’, American Historical Review, 50 (1944), 26–48 (37 n.59).

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his own realm and to courts across Europe that English policy had decisively turned away from the associations cultivated by his predecessor’.16 The early years of the seventeenth century thus witnessed an increase in aggression between the Safavids and the Ottomans and overtures of a closer relationship between England and Persia from James, which had immediate consequences for Anglo-Persian relations. Increased trade with Persia, a long-held English interest, and closer diplomatic involvement, now seemed possible.17 English travel writings about Persia from this period, such as those about the three Sherley brothers, Thomas, Anthony and Robert, were often produced in support of such possibilities. Before looking in detail at a play which was engaged both with contemporary Persia and with the Sherleys’ endeavours, however, this chapter will briefly consider two early plays of Persia, in which the themes already associated with classical Persia in the English dramatic imagination were maintained.

Alexander, Daniel, and the Revival of Classical Persia William Alexander’s Monarchicke Tragedies , dedicated to the king, were published in London as well as Edinburgh between 1603 and 1607. In a variety of ways, the plays dramatise contemporary debates on counsel and kingship, themselves constituting a form of advice-giving to James VI and I, who was proclaimed king of England in March of 1603 and crowned in July.18 Recent readings of the Tragedies have explored the plays’ various engagements in the advice-to-princes tradition. Sally Mapstone, for example, has argued that they ‘interrogate situations of monarchic instability, fallibility, and destruction’ in order to offer advice to James on the means to successful kingship19 ; and Kirsten Sandrock

16 Dimmock, New Turkes, p. 200. 17 On the long-held English interest in trade with Persia and the Orient, see D. W.

Davies, Elizabethans Errant: The Strange Fortunes of Sir Thomas Sherley and His Three Sons as Well as in the Dutch Wars as in Moscovy, Morocco, Spain, and the Indies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), p. 82. 18 Jane Rickard, Writing the Monarch in Jacobean England: Jonson, Donne, Shakespeare and the Works of King James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 35. 19 Sally Mapstone, ‘Drunkenness and Ambition in Seventeenth-Century Scottish Literature’, Studies in Scottish Literature, 35–36 (2007), 131–55 (141). See also Astrid

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reads the Monarchicke Tragedies as offering counsel on foreign politics, both in Europe and beyond, as well as on domestic matters. For Alexander, Sandrock contends, ‘The Monarchicke Tragedies [were] a springboard from which to delve into the moral and political problems of ancient empire-building and early modern colonialism’.20 Two of the tragedies focus on classical Persian narratives or people as their subject matter: Darius, which dramatises events from the reign of Darius III, the Achaemenid king of Persia (380–30 BC), and Croesus, in which King Croesus wishes to invade Persia to build his own empire. The use of Persia to engage in this dramatic counsel is most clearly demonstrated in Darius, the first of the dramas to be published, in 1603.21 The play recounts the invasion of Darius’ Persia by Alexander the Great, an event to which later plays of Persia would return. Darius has previously demanded that Philip, Alexander’s father, should pay homage to Darius as the greatest monarch alive; after Philip’s refusal and subsequent death, Alexander invades Persia as a form of vengeance. As Sandrock points out, the play is more thoughtful and introspective than this description of its plot so far would suggest. Darius, she argues: delves into moral questions of vengeance, vanity, and empire-building, focusing particularly on the protagonist’s pride that spurred his imperial desires. In exile, Darius muses on the overthrow of his realm and realizes that his defeat was grounded in his own misconduct, especially in his dreams of ‘greatnesse’.22

As the play progresses, Darius recognises both his own failings and the vulnerability of the state of kingship, in which the monarch’s dependence on the people for his power makes him weak. The king’s ‘pow’r depends vpon the peoples voice, /And to seeme soueraigne needs we must serue all’; the risk of being swelled by ‘popular applause’ is that a monarch

Stilma, ‘William Alexander, King James and Neo-Stoic Advice to Princes in The Monarchick Tragedies ’, in David J. Parkinson, ed., James VI and I, Literature and Scotland: Tides of Change, 1567–1625 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), pp. 233–49; Kirsten Sandrock, ‘Ancient empires and early modern colonialism in William Alexander’s Monarchicke Tragedies (1603–1607)’, Renaissance Studies, 31: 3 (2017), 346–64. 20 Sandrock, 364. 21 On its publication, see Sandrock, ‘Drunkenness and Ambition’, 353. 22 Sandrock, ‘Drunkenness and Ambition’, 354.

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may seek, as Darius has done, ‘T’enlarge our limites with our neighbours losse’, so that ‘We of our owne confusions are the cause’.23 Darius is also vulnerable to the false advice of his counsellors, who intend to mislead him through poor counsel in order to achieve their own ends. Bessus and Narbazanes, Persian noblemen who become traitors to Darius, plan through ‘crooked seeming-upright counsel to/Disguise our practises, and maske our minde’, deliberately mis-advising the king so that they can grab his power and ‘part his Empire all among vs’.24 The dramatisation of the role of counsel in governance and the potentially fraught relationship between king and counsellors in Darius shows that the revival of interest in classical Persia in the early seventeenth century continued to use Persia to explore governance and counsel, and to construct an imaginary classical Persia to examine the mechanisms by which power is won, held and maintained. As Sandrock has shown, this interest expanded to include foreign as well as domestic political interests. The expansion of a monarch’s realm is also an interest of Samuel Daniel’s tragedy Philotas (1604), based on the story of an ancient Greek warrior who was put to death for conspiring against Alexander. Philotas was performed by the Children of the Queen’s Revels at court, likely in 1604, the same year that it was licensed by Daniel himself in his role as Licenser to the company.25 The play immediately landed Daniel in trouble; he was summoned to appear before the Privy Council and ‘although the record of his appearance has been lost, from his own account […] he stood accused of including in his play treatment of the career and downfall of Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex’.26 The focus on the Elizabethan context of the play has tended to detract attention from its directly Jacobean setting. Daniel Cadman’s recent work on the play has argued that Philotas engages with specific concerns present in 1603 and 1604 surrounding James’ accession to the English throne, with, for example, the play’s anxiety about the effects of introducing Persians 23 Darius, in William Alexander, The monarchicke tragedies: Crœsus, Darius, The Alexandræan, Iulius Cæs ar (1607), Hr. All quotations will be from this edition of the text and given in footnotes. 24 Darius, E4v. 25 For the date of the play, see Hugh Gazzard, ‘“Those Graue Presentments of Antiq-

uitie”: Samuel Daniel’s Philotas and the Earl of Essex’, The Review of English Studies, 51 (2000), 423–450 (423–4). 26 Gazzard, ‘“Those Graue Presentments of Antiquitie”’, 424.

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to Macedonian society reflecting contemporary apprehension about the growing influence of Scots at the English court.27 In particular, Cadman argues that the subplot of Philotas interrogates James’ efforts to bring the kingdoms of Britain together, his awarding of a large number of knighthoods at the beginning of his reign, and his defence of the divine right of kings. Alexander’s divine status is an important factor of his identity in the play and is referred to more than once, including by the king himself, once the oracle has confirmed that he is indeed the son of Jove. Alexander refers to his status as ‘bestowd on mee, /By th’Oracle of Ioue’; for him, it is a quality ‘Which th’oracles themselues held requisite/And which not I, but men on me haue laid’.28 Alexander distances himself from the granting of his close relationship to divinity, but his critics perceive it as a marker of his self-regard. For some Macedonians, Alexander’s divine status is very much a human construct, offensive to both God and man: ‘we haue made a God of our owne bloud, /That glorifies himselfe, neglects our good’.29 As the Argument to the play explains, the assumption of a divine status by Alexander is interpreted by the Macedonians as being specifically a Persian trait; the withdrawal of public support from him is perceived to be in response to both his self-aggrandisement via the claim to divinity and to his increasingly Persian identity: ‘indeed Alexanders drawing a pedegree from heauen with assuming the Persian magnificence; was the cause that withdrew many the hearts of the nobilitie and people from him’.30 Thus Persia functions to intensify the presentation of Alexander as a self-regarding monarch, potentially corrupted by ‘Persian magnificence’. Alexander’s ‘assumption of godlike status’, as Cadman argues, means that he makes himself ‘culpable of the same overbearing pride that caused Darius to fall’.31 His adoption of Persian characteristics mirrors a potential descent into Persian tyranny. In the Chorus at the

27 Daniel Cadman, ‘“Th’accession of these mighty States”: Daniel’s Philotas and the union of crowns’, Renaissance Studies, 26.3 (2012), 365–384. 28 Samuel Daniel, Philotas, in Certaine small poems lately printed with the tragedie of Philotas (1605), Act 4, Scene 2, D8v. All quotations will be from this edition of the text and given in footnotes. 29 Daniel, Philotas, Act 5, Scene 2, F5r. 30 Daniel, Philotas, The Argument, A6v. 31 Cadman, ‘“Th’accession of these mighty States”’, 384.

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beginning of Act Five, performed by a Greek and a Persian, the Persian begins by insisting on the resulting similarity between Greece and Persia: Well then I see there is small difference Betwixt your state and ours, you ciuill Greek You great contriuers of free gouerments. Whose skill the world from out all countries seekes. Those whom you call your kings are but the same As are our soueraigne tirants of the East, I see they onely differ but in name, Th’effects they shew agree, or neere at least.32

There is a risk that Greece will follow Persia into complete tyranny, where a king’s frown usurps the rule of law as the ultimate power in the land: Onely herein they differ, that your Prince Proceeds by forme of law t’effect his end; Our Persian Monarch makes his frowne conuince The strongest truth: his sword the proces ends With present death, and maks no more adoo, He neuer stands to giue a glosse vnto His violence, to make it to appeare In other hew, then that it ought to beare.33

The Persian and Greek go on to debate the divinity of kingship, with the Persian arguing the monarchs, like divine beings, should not need to trouble themselves in base matters, such as the workings of the justice system; to do so is ‘t’invulgar so/That sacred presence’. When the Greek maintains that ‘Where kings are so like gods, there subiects are not men’, the Persian points out that ‘Your king begins this course, & what wil you be then?’, suggesting that the prospect of Persian tyranny and subjection is near at hand.34 Classical Persia continues to form a convenient backdrop for playwrights to convey concerns about kingship and governance in the early years of the 1600s, just as it had in the previous century.

32 Daniel, Philotas, Act 5, Chorus, E8r. 33 Ibid. 34 Daniel, Philotas, Act 5, Chorus, E8v.

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The Sherley Brothers and Persia in Early Modern English Travel Writing There were also some changes to the ways in which Persia was described in early seventeenth-century literature, which involved paying closer attention to contemporary, Safavid Persia. The rise in European travel to Persia which continued into the seventeenth century led to a marked increase in travel literature about Persia in the 1600s.35 As Grogan has noted: the dominance of the Ottomans and Venetians in the Mediterranean, together with the ‘almost continuall warres betweene the Turkes, and the Persians’, and the Portuguese/ Spanish control of key points of access, as well as other domestic factors, meant that a sea-route to Persia from England was dangerously risky and not seriously considered until a couple of decades into the seventeenth century.36

Information on Persia and the Ottoman empire reached early seventeenth-century readers of English in a variety of ways. These included historical texts, such as The History of the Warres Betweene the Turkes and the Persians (1595) by Giovanni Tommaso Minadoi, and Giovanni Botero’s influential Historicall Description of the Most Famous Kingdomes and Common-weales in the Worlde (translated by Abraham Hartwell in 1603), and general or geographical works, like A Briefe Description of the Whole Worlde (1599) by George Abbot and Peter Heylyn’s Microcosmus (1621). Early accounts from travellers to the region were also available, such as William Biddulph’s The Travels of certain Englishmen into Africa, Asia, Troy, Bythinia, Thracia, and to the Blacke Sea (1609) and John Cartwright’s The Preachers Travels (1611). Two of Anthony Sherley’s English companions, William Parry and George

35 For the rise in European travel to, and contact with, Persia in the early seventeenth century and its causes, see Hellmut Braun, ‘Iran under the Safavids and in the Eighteenth Century’, in The Muslim World: A Historical Survey. Part III: The Last Great Muslim Empires, ed. by Bertold Spuler, trans. by F. R. C. Bagley (Leiden: Brill, 1969), pp. 181– 218 (p. 194–5); Roger Stevens, ‘European Visitors to the Safavid Court’, Iranian Studies, 7.3 (1974), 421–57 (421); and David Morgan, Medieval Persia, 1040–1797 (London: Longman, 1988), p. 139. 36 Grogan, ‘The Not-Forgotten Empire’, 915, quoting Abbot, A Brief Description of the Whole World, C3v.

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Manwaring, as well as his French steward Abel Pinçon, wrote reports of their time in Persia and the Ottoman empire in the early 1600s, in addition to Anthony’s own A True Report of Sir A Sherlies Journey (printed in 1600 and immediately suppressed), and Sir Anthony Sherley his Relation of his Travels into Persia, which was printed in 1613.37 A significant proportion of English travel writing about contemporary Persia thus emanated from men associated with the Sherley brothers in one way or another. The Sherleys’ travels easily lent themselves to stories of exploit and adventure; as Laurence Publicover has noted, they were ‘peculiarly susceptible to romance treatment’, both in the literature of the period and in twentieth-century retellings of their experiences, such as D. W. Davies’s 1967 book, Elizabethans Errant: The Strange Fortunes of Sir Thomas Sherley and His Three Sons.38 The story of the travels of the Sherley brothers begins in 1598, when Anthony went to Ferrara on behalf of the Earl of Essex to intervene in a dispute regarding the possession of a duchy, which was resolved by the time he arrived. At a loose end, Anthony then journeyed to Venice, where he met up with his brother Robert, and they decided to travel on through Turkey into Persia. Both Anthony and Robert would subsequently represent the Shah, acting as his ambassador at various European courts, as Abb¯as sought to negotiate with Christian rulers and to build alliances against the Ottomans.39 The Sherleys’ timing, arriving in Persia at the very end of the sixteenth century, 37 William Parry, A New and Large Discourse on the Travels of Sir Anthony Sherley Knight, by Sea, and ouer Land, to the Persian Empire (London, 1601); George Manwaring, A True Discourse of Sir Anthony Sherley’s Travel Into Persia, ed. by E. Denison Ross in Sir Anthony Sherley and His Persian Adventure [1933] (London: Routledge Curzon, 2005). Manwaring’s original account remained in manuscript until Denison Ross’s 1933 collection of contemporary writings about Sherley. It may be consulted in the British Library, MS Sloane 105. 38 Laurence Publicover, ‘Strangers at home: the Sherley brothers and dramatic

romance’, Renaissance Studies, 24.5 (2010), 694–709 (695). 39 For more information on Anthony Sherley’s travels see his Relations of Travels into Persia (1613; repr. Amsterdam, 1974); Davies, Elizabethans Errant. See also Jonathan Burton, ‘The Shah’s Two Ambassadors: The Travels of the Three English Brothers and the Global Early Modern’ in Emissaries in Early Modern Literature and Culture: Mediation, Transmission, Traffic, 1550–1700, ed. by Brinda Charry and Gitanjali Shahani (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 23–40; Laurence Publicover, ‘Strangers at home’; Ralf Hertel, ‘Ousting the Ottomans: The Double Vision of the East in The Travels of the Three English Brothers (1607)’, in Early Modern Encounters with the Islamic East: Performing Cultures, ed. by Sabine Schülting, Sabine Lucia Muller and Ralf Hertel (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 135–51; Nedda Mehdizadeh, ‘Robert Sherley and the Persian Habit’, in England’s

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fitted with the Shah’s interests in developing such associations, if not with Elizabeth’s waning interest in the prospect of closer Anglo-Persian relations. The Sherleys’ travels gave rise to a number of publications, most of which present both the Sherleys themselves and the prospect of closer ties between England and Persia in a positive light. The publication of Anthony Nixon’s relation of all three brothers’ travels, The Three English Brothers, which appeared in 1607, the play by Day, Rowley and Wilkins which was based on Nixon’s pamphlet and first performed in the same year, and a pamphlet by Thomas Middleton, entitled Sir Robert Sherley and printed in 1609, all attempted to build interest in and support for the Sherleys at home. Later diplomatic missions to Persia would also result in publications about the country. Thomas Herbert, for example, who was attached to the first English ambassador in Persia, Sir Dodmore Cotton, wrote of his travels in Persia from 1627 in A Relation of Some Years Travaile (1634). Early seventeenth-century travel literature often records positive impressions of Persia, frequently making explicit comparison to the Ottoman empire. In Herbert’s account, Persia is portrayed as being home to people who are courteous to strangers, and also suitably strong and warlike: ‘No Nation in the Uniuerse has better nor more daring spirits in fight or exercise, then Persia has’.40 The Italian diplomat Giovanni Botero also suggested that ‘the forme of goverment amongst this nation is not like the gouernment of anie other Mahumetan people: neither is there to be seene the like policie in anie place through the whole east, as amongst the Persians.’41 Anthony Sherley even indicated that Persia could provide a political model to be imitated elsewhere: ‘the fashion of his [the Persian shah’s] government differing so much from that which we call barbarousnesse, that it may justly serve for as great an Idea for a Principality, as Platoes Common-wealth did for a Government, of that sort.’42 The Persians, governed by a monarch who claimed to be a descendent of ‘Ali

Asian Renaissance, ed. by Su Fang Ng and Carmen Nocentelli (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2022), pp. 55–78. 40 Herbert, A Relation of Some Years Travaile, p. 149. Further references will be given in parentheses in the text. 41 Botero, An Historicall description of the Most Famous Kingdomes and Common-weales in the Worlde, pp. 210–1. 42 Sherley, A True Report of Sir A Sherlies Journey, p. 29. Further references will be given in parentheses in the text.

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himself (that is, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law), were renowned in the seventeenth century as a submissive people who followed their monarch’s commands without question.43 Until the early seventeenth century, the images of Persian people with whom English audiences would have been most familiar would largely have been those of individual or generic kings, ‘the figure of Cyrus and the related figure of the “Sophy”’.44 As Ladan Niayesh has pointed out, sources often led to the reduction of Persia to its political system, ‘and more specifically to the person of its monarch’, in early modern drama.45 As travellers encountered Persian people and began to write about them, travel literature began to offer a wider range of images of Persians to readers. For Anthony Sherley, Persian territories are ‘better inhabited, better governed, and in better obedience, and affection’ than those of the Ottomans.46 Writing of his travels through Asia twenty-five years later, Herbert also noted that ‘the Turkes be not comparable to the Persian for magnanimity and noblenesse of mind’ (p. 145). The superior treatment of Europeans in Persia was naturally a focus for many travellers; thus we find Manwaring insisting that ‘the country of Persia is far more pleasant for a stranger to live in than the Turks’ country’.47 Parry also mentioned the different treatment that might be expected in each place in terms that accord Persia an Edenic status: ‘we then happily entred the King of Persiaes country, where vpon our first entrance we thought we had bin imparadized, finding our entertainement to be so good, and the maner of the people to be so kinde and curteous (farre differing from the Turkes)’.48 Pinçon, too, emphasised the difference between Turk and Persian, and characterised it as intentional on behalf of the Persians: ‘les

43 Ferrier, trans. and ed., A Journey to Persia: Jean Chardin’s Portrait of a SeventeenthCentury Empire, p. 77. For the government of Persia under the Safavid dynasty, see Ferrier, pp. 76–96. 44 Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 113. 45 Niayesh, ‘Shakespeare’s Persians’, 130, 128. 46 Sherley, Sir Antony Sherley His Relation of His Travels into Persia, p. 36. All further references will be given in parentheses in the text. 47 Manwaring, A True Discourse, pp. 216–7. 48 Parry, A New and Large Discourse, p. 18.

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Persans ont en grande abomination les Turcs, les reputant impurs en leur loy’.49 This reference to the divergence in ‘law’ between Persians and Ottomans attests to an important way in which their dissimilarity was understood in religious terms. Since the start of Safavid rule in Persia, which began with the reign of Shah Isma’il I in 1501, Persia had been predominantly a Shi’ite state, while the Ottoman empire remained largely Sunni.50 Shi’ism, the second largest denomination in Islam after Sunnism, is characterised by its attention to the spiritual authority of Muhammad’s family, and especially his daughter Fatima and her husband ‘Ali and their descendants. From the Shi’ite perspective, ‘Ali was the rightful successor of the Prophet Muhammad; the word shi’ism or al-shi’a derives from shi’at ‘Ali or ‘the party of Ali’, and many early references to the differences between Shi’ism and Sunnism identify attention to ‘Ali as a Shi’ite characteristic. The sectarian divide between Shi’ite and Sunni had played a part in the hostilities between the Safavids and the Ottomans during this time.51 From the late 1580s, the growing awareness of Persian Shi’ism in England has been called ‘a turning point in the cultural and literary history of England in terms of its reception and awareness of an emerging Islamic other, Persian Shi’ism.’52 Descriptions of Persian religious practice demonstrate that early seventeenth-century travellers comprehended that the sectarian division between Ottoman and Persian was significant and potentially useful. Several contemporary accounts speak of the Persians in terms which stress the superiority of their faith over that of the Ottomans, while recognising that both states are Islamic. For Parry, writing of his time in Antioch, 49 Pinçon, Relation d’vn voyage de Perse Faict es Années 1598 & 1599, p. 141. In

English, ‘the Persians hold the Turks in great abomination, saying that they are impure in their law’, trans. by Denison Ross, Sir Anthony Sherley and His Persian Adventure, p. 163. 50 On Persia under the Safavid dynasty, see Savory, Iran Under the Safavids; Peter Jackson and Laurence Lockhart, eds., The Cambridge History Of Iran: Volume 6: The Timurid and Safavid Periods, especially Chapter 7; Garthwaite, The Persians, Chapter 6. For the origins of Shi’ism, its emergence as state religion under the Safavids, and its significance in Persia/Iran, see Arjomand, The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam, Part II, and Petrushevsky, Islam in Iran, pp. 30–3. For Shi’i Islam in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Momen, An Introduction to Shi ‘i Islam, pp. 105–14. 51 Petrushevsky, Islam in Iran, p. 326. 52 Ghatta, ‘“By Mortus Ali and our Persian gods”’, 245.

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the behaviour of the Ottomans, ‘besides that they are damned Infidells, and Zodomiticall Mahomets’, justifies ‘the hate we christians doe justly holde them in’ (10). While recognising that the faith of the Persians is similar in ‘devotion’, i.e., in its practical manifestations, he notes that they are ‘somwhat different in religion’: ‘As the Persian praieth only to Mahomet, and Mortus Ally, the Turke to those two, and three other that were Mahomets servants’ (23). Parry was not the only European traveller to make a feature of this division between Sunni and Shi’a, and sectarian differences within Islam had long been noted.53 Herbert’s relation of his Eastern travels during the 1620s includes an explanation of the dissimilarity in belief and practice between Ottoman and Persian. Herbert describes how sectarian disagreement served political ends, with Persian establishment of Shi’ism envisaged as ‘a plot to make a perpetuall hatred between the Turkes and them, and to re-establish the Scepter in the line of Mortis Haly’ (p. 159). The narrative reports that this purpose was achieved by Shah Isma’il I (the founder of the Safavid dynasty), who ‘perswades the Persians that Abubecher, Omar and Ozman, the three immediate Caliphs or Successours to Mahomet ’, were ‘Villanes and Impostures, that most unjustly they opposed Mortis Haly, Mahomets sonne in Law, and heire by Legacie’. Although the Ottomans pray to these caliphs, the Persians ‘thinke otherwise of them, as enemies to Mahomet, and all good men, and that all their Disciples were Toades, the of-scum of the earth & vile Apostates’. In return, the Ottoman Sunni Muslims ‘hate them like Dogges, and call them Rafadi and Caffarrs, or Schismaticks, and themselues Sonnj, and Mussulmen, which is truly faithfull ’ (p. 159). Herbert goes onto explain that the difference between Shi’ite Persian and Sunni Ottoman causes disruption between the two nations and faiths: ‘this diverstitie of opinion causing that great opposition and hatred twixt the Turke and Persian, apparent to this day’ (pp. 163–4).54

53 See for example d’Anghiera, The History of Trauayle in the West and East Indies, p. 380; Manwaring, A True Discourse, p. 217; Ducket, ‘Further observations concerning the state of Persia’, vol. 2, p. 127. Persia in the seventeenth century contained people of a variety of religions, including orthodox Christians, Gregorian Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians; see Davies, Elizabthans Errant, p. 96. 54 For the positive impressions of Islam as practised by the Persians in Herbert’s report, and his portrayal of Islam in general, see Ahmad Gunny, Images of Islam in EighteenthCentury Writings (London: Grey Seal, 1996), pp. 11–2.

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In attributing the aggression between the Ottoman and Safavid empires to religious differences, early seventeenth-century travel writers were in accord with contemporary descriptions of the two nations. Heylyn’s Micrcosmus, in contrast to Pinçon, places the Ottomans as aggressors, saying of the Persians that Their religion is Mahumetanisme, in which they differ from the Turkes about the successours of Mahomet (as shall be shewed anon) and some other circumstances; hence the Turkes reputing them schismaticall, continually persecute them with the fire and the sword.55

In A Briefe Description of the Whole Worlde, George Abbot described the sectarian divide between the two empires as the source of their fighting, which is mutual in origin: ‘the one pursuing the other as heretickes with most deadly hatred. In somuch, that there be in this respect, almost continuall wars between the Turkes, and the Persians.’56 Abbot, in company with other commentators from the period, naturally related this disunity within Islam to that of his own faith, stating that ‘as Papistes and Protestants doe differ in opinion, concerning the same Christ, so doe the Turkes, and Persians about their Mahomet ’.57 As Kenneth Parker has noted, the contestation between Sunni and Shi’a, which was mapped on to the discord between Ottoman and Persian, was perceived during this period as the counterpart of that between Protestant and Catholic.58 In Europe, this ongoing conflict came to be seen as something from which European nations could benefit. Minadoi’s The History of the Warres Betweene the Turkes and the Persians described the potential benefits for Europe in the engagement of ‘two enimies of Christ’ in a warre not onely long & bloudie, but also very commodious and of great oportunitie to the Christian Common-wealth: for that it hath granted

55 Heylyn, Microcosmus, p. 331. 56 Abbot, A Briefe Description of the Whole Worlde, sig. B4r. 57 Abbot, A Briefe Description, B4rr. 58 Parker, ed., Early Modern Tales of Orient, p. 4.

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leisure to the Champions of Christ to refresh and encrease their forces, being now much weakened by warres both Forreine and Ciuill.59

Minadoi recognised that the conflict between the Ottomans and the Persians could be exploited to Christian advantage, since it turned Ottoman attention from the ambitions that might otherwise be targeted at Europe.60 By the early seventeenth century, there was a tradition within English Protestant literature of linking the Ottomans and the Catholics; in Foxe’s Acts and Monuments of 1570, for example, both the Ottoman sultan and the Pope are identified as types of the Antichrist.61 Writings about the East sometimes perpetuated this association between Ottoman and Catholic; Ralph Carr’s The Mahumetane or Turkish Historie, for example, which was printed in London in 1600, mentions that the ‘Caliphe doth execute his office as though he were both their Pope and their Emperor’.62 We might expect the travel narratives related to the Sherley mission, which attempted to support the Sherleys’ endeavours and promote Anglo-Persian relations, to emphasise the correlation between Protestant and Persian which the potential identification of Ottoman with Catholic would seem to support. In his Relation of his Travels into Persia of 1613, Anthony Sherley mentions that the Persian shah is keen to maintain the Shi’ite identity of his state, to eliminate ‘that Religion of Mahomet, which followed the interpretation of Ussen and Omar, and to make his people cleave to that of Ally’, and organises ritual burnings of images of ‘Ussen and Omar’ to this purpose (Relation, 74). Hussein and Omar were the caliphs ‘venerated by Sunni Muslims but rejected as false prophets by the Shi’ites’.63 The burning of images is clearly understood

59 Giovanni Tommaso Minadoi, The History of the Warres Betweene the Turkes and the Persians, trans. by Abraham Hartwell (London, 1603), 2, 1, quoted in Dimmock, New Turkes, p. 139. 60 Dimmock, New Turkes, p. 139. 61 Dimmock, New Turkes, p. 78. 62 Ralph Carr, The Mahumetane or Turkish Historie (1600), Cr. 63 Anthony Parr, ‘Foreign Relations in Jacobean England: The Sherley Brothers and

the “Voyage of Persia”’, in Travel and Drama in Shakespeare’s Time, ed. by Jean-Pierre Maquerlot and Michèle Willems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 14– 31 (p. 21).

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by Sherley as having a political purpose, in that it encourages the religious unity necessary for tyrannical rule, but could also be interpreted as appealing to his potentially Protestant audience’s presumed distaste for graven images and similar decoration.64 As Anthony Parr points out, Shi’a Islam had a variety of features, including the burning of images, which might be expected to appeal to English Protestants.65 The potential correlation between Protestant and Shi’a might be strengthened by Isma’il’s commitment of his people to the Shi’a faith; with this action, Isma’il had undertaken a break from the Sunni majority which might appear to parallel England’s break from Rome. Other travellers also used their observances of Persian religion to emphasise the potential similarities between Persia and England. George Manwaring, for example, recorded Abb¯as’s conversation with a Franciscan friar in which Abb¯as mocked the Pope, criticising the notion that he is Christ’s representative on earth, and asserting that only ‘God the Father’ could pardon or forgive human sin.66 At this the friar was ‘stricken mute’, and Abb¯as reported to Anthony that ‘he [‘Abb¯as] was almost a Christian in his heart since his [Anthony’s] coming unto him’ (225). The suggestion that ‘Abb¯as was inclined towards Christianity featured in a variety of reports from the period. Anthony Nixon, author of the pamphlet The Three English Brothers, hinted at the prospect of the shah’s conversion to Christianity, to which ‘Abb¯as ‘lends such attentive eare’ that ‘he may in time bee brought to become a Christian’.67 As early as 1598, Geffrey Ducket had noted in his Further observations concerning the state of Persia that: ‘they say furthermore, that if he [Mortus Ali] come not shortly, they shalbe of our beliefe’.68 Given that Shi’a Muslims believe ‘Ali should have inherited leadership after the Prophet’s death, Ducket’s observation demonstrates a willingness to link ‘Abb¯as’s interest in Christianity to his status as a Shi’ite Muslim. It should be noted, however, that Catholic

64 See Parr, ‘Foreign Relations’, p. 21. 65 Parr, ‘Foreign Relations’, p. 21. 66 Manwaring, A True Discourse, pp. 224–5. 67 Anthony Nixon, The Three English Brothers (1607), K4v. 68 Ducket, ‘Further observations concerning the state of Persia’, vol. 2, p. 127; see also

Davies, Elizabethans Errant, p. 130. Nixon also reports on the imminent conversion of the shah (The Three English Brothers, K4v).

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travellers were just as interested in the prospect of the shah’s conversion to Christianity. In 1606, a pamphlet was published in Paris entitled La Nouvelle Conversion du Roy de Perse, which suggested that the shah had in fact already been converted by Jesuits at Pentecost in 1605.69 Similarly, Pope Clement VIII appears to have written to a supposedly Christian member of the shah’s harem in order to persuade her to help effect ‘Abb¯as’s conversion to the Christian faith.70 It is perhaps because of their knowledge of and emphasis on Persian religious tolerance that the English reports printed in London stop short of stating explicitly that ‘Abb¯as favoured Protestantism over Catholicism. As well as English travellers, ‘Abb¯as tolerated Catholic religious orders in his country and Catholics were also travelling to Persia for reasons of trade and diplomacy in the early seventeenth century.71 The shah himself seems to have been interested in links with any Christian nation; he sought joint military action against the Ottoman empire and promised toleration of Christians, both Protestant and Catholic. Still more significant for the English travel narratives must have been the Sherley brothers’ own religious status, following their conversion to Catholicism during their time in Persia; ‘Sir’ Anthony’s knighthood had been conveyed by a Catholic king, a fact which had caused some displeasure to his own monarch, Elizabeth.72 On leaving Persia, Anthony, as Robert would be after him, was sent to the ‘Christian princes’ of Europe, travelling first to the papal court, rather than to his native land. Thus on their various missions to Europe as Abb¯as’s representatives, the Sherley brothers sought to appeal to Catholic as well as Protestant heads of state, and their aim was to achieve closer European ties with Persia, as well as closer Anglo-Persian relations.73 The narratives which 69 La nouvelle conversion du Roy de Perse. Avec la deffette de deux cents mil Turcs après sa conversion (Paris, 1606). 70 A Chronicle of the Carmelites in Persia and the Papal Mission of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries, 2 vols (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1939), vol. 1, p. 88. 71 For example, on French travel to Persia during the seventeenth century and harmonious relations between the two nations, see M. H. Karimi, ‘Persia in the Writings of Montesquieu’, The Durham University Journal, n.s. 38 (1976–1977), 231–7 (231). 72 For the Sherleys’ conversion to Catholicism, see Davies, Elizabethans Errant, p. 135, p. 167. 73 Niels Steensgaard, The Asian Trade Revolution of the Seventeenth Century: The East India Companies and the Decline of the Caravan Trade (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. 224.

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describe their travels are generally unable to claim that their mission is Protestant in nature; it is likely that English audiences would have known enough about the Sherley brothers to have been aware that any claims made to Protestantism on their behalf would be unstable. The question of the religious status of the shah, the Sherleys and their mission was to become a dominant feature of imaginative literature based on their adventures, as a closer examination of the play will demonstrate. In The Travailes, Persia can be seen to offer a model of kingship which negotiates religious and national difference to present a proto-colonial vision of England’s future, although this vision is fatally undermined by the text itself.

The Travailes of the Three English Brothers (1607) John Day, William Rowley and George Wilkins’ play, The Travailes of the Three English Brothers, was entered on the Stationer’s Register on 29 June 1607, just weeks after Anthony Nixon’s pamphlet The Three English Brothers, suggesting either that the play was based on the pamphlet, or that both drew from a common source. This source could have been Thomas Sherley himself, given that he was in London at this time; Thomas had, thanks to the intervention of James VI & I, been released from captivity in Constantinople in December 1606.74 The play was performed by the Queen Anne’s Men, most likely at both the Red Bull theatre and the Curtain; the latter playhouse is referred to on the title page of the edition printed in quarto in the same year. We can surmise that the play was initially popular, as it stayed in repertory through the summer of 1607.75 Abid Masood has argued that it was Day, Rowley and Wilkins’ play that first ‘introduced the nature of Anglo-Persian relations in the early seventeenth century into the public sphere’, making

74 Masood, ‘From Cyrus to Abb¯ as’, p. 168; Bernadette Andrea, ‘Lady Sherley: The First Persian in England?’, The Muslim World, 95.2 (2005), 279–95 (45); Mark Hutchings, ‘Staging the Sherleys’ Travails’, Cahiers élisabéthains, 87.1 (2015), 43–62 (45). On the play’s sources, see also Jesús López-Peláez Casellas, who discusses its ‘direct and undeniable indebtedness to a diversity of sources and related documents, travel narratives and pamphlets mainly’ in ‘The Travailes of the Three English Brothers and the Textual Construction of Early Modern Identities’, Interlitteraria, 21.2 (2016), 253–274 (254). 75 Parr, Three Renaissance Travel Plays, p. 55fn.

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images of contemporary Persia available to a much wider audience than had previously been possible, given the more restricted readerships of travel writings and histories. This, Masood contends, ‘was Shah Abb¯as’s first visit to England.’76 The Travailes has often been read as straightforward Sherley propaganda, though more recent reassessments of the play have argued that it is too ambiguous and complex to uphold such an uncomplicated reading.77 Mark Hutchings suggests that the play rather ‘registers the desire of the playwrights and acting company to exploit the material for all that it was worth’ and that the ‘result was a critique of the Sherley project, even as the play appeared to offer playgoers an attractive and patriotic romance celebrating English endeavours abroad’.78 Both in promoting and in critiquing the Sherleys’ undertakings, the images of Persia presented in The Travailes are much more detailed than any we have seen in previous plays of Persia, and more interested in contemporary Persian identities, including religious identity. As Javad Ghatta has noted, ‘Perhaps no other English play with Muslim characters has given such strong voice to the ancient Persian traditions of Mazdaism or Zoroastrianism, and not without cause,’ and, as we will see, the particular identity of Persian Shi’ism was also central to the play’s representation of Persia identity.79 The Travailes stages a richer, more rounded Persia than any of its predecessors, but this Persia, though more detailed and directly related to contemporary sources about Persia and its people, was nonetheless as imaginary as any other dramatic version of Persia, and as focused on the desires and preconceptions of its English audience. The Travailes is largely set in Persia, describing voyages and adventures in each brother’s life in the East and linking them through dumb-show and the narrative of a chorus. Thomas Sherley journeys to Anatolia, where he is taken prisoner by ‘the Great Turk’, tortured and eventually ransomed by Robert; Robert and Anthony spend most of the action of the play at the court of the Persian shah, whom they impress with their bravery and military skills, and outwit Persian officials who are jealous of 76 Masood, ‘From Cyrus to Abb¯ as’, p. 165. 77 Hutchings, ‘Staging the Sherleys’ Travails’, 44. Casellas also argues that the play is

more complex than has previously been appreciated in ‘The Travailes of the Three English Brothers and the Textual Construction of Early Modern Identities’, 255. 78 Hutchings, ‘Staging the Sherleys’ Travails’, 44. 79 Ghatta, ‘“By Mortus Ali and our Persian gods”’, 240.

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their meteoric rise to power. By the end of the play, Anthony has returned to Europe with the shah’s embassy to the Christian princes and the papal court, and Robert is domiciled in Persia, married to the shah’s niece and made captain of his army. The Travailes thus stages the potential reception that English travellers and traders might hope to receive in Persia, and presents the Persian court as open to infiltration by English influences. The character of Shah ‘Abb¯as, referred to in the play as the ‘Sophy’, is deeply impressed by his English visitors, and especially Anthony, feeling for him an admiration which extends to a desire for emulation. After his first conversation with Anthony, ‘Abb¯as exclaims: What powers do wrap me in amazement thus? Methinks this Christian’s more than mortal. Sure he conceals himself! Within my thoughts Never was man so deeply registered. But God or Christian, or whate’er he be, I wish to be none other but as he.80

To the Sophy, Anthony is both ‘worthy Englishman, and worthy Christian’ (ii. 238). In the opening scene, the Persian soldiers enact a battle between Ottomans and Persians, in which they return with the heads of the Ottoman prisoners on their swords. This is followed by a mock skirmish between Anthony and Robert, in which clemency is granted to the Christians’ captives, leading the shah to respond, ‘We never heard of honour until now’ (i.111), and to ask Anthony to teach him ‘unknown rudiments of war’ (i.126). When the Sophy asks Anthony to ‘Tell us thy precepts and we’ll adore thee’ (i.127), he establishes a relationship in which the English are considerably more elevated than they were in the reality of Anglo-Persian relations. As Casellas has pointed out, ‘In a typically proto-colonial fashion Travailes introduces early on the first Persian admissions of English superiority’, and as the play progresses, the Sherley brothers quickly emerge as idealised Englishmen, becoming friends with and advisors to the Persians.81 Nedda Mehdizadeh agrees that, ‘[e]ven as Travels imagines an ideological alignment between England and Persia 80 The Travels of the Three English Brothers in Three Renaissance Travel Plays, ed. by Anthony Parr, scene i, ll. 74–9. All further references will be to this edition and will be given in parentheses in the text. 81 Casellas, ‘The Travailes of the Three English Brothers and the Textual Construction of Early Modern Identities’, 259.

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through this shared perspective about the Turks, it also reinforces an imagined superiority of England over Persia.’82 Thus, as Ralf Hertel has written, ‘At first sight it seems that East–West relations are simple in this dramatic world, which appears to exemplify an Orientalism as defined by Edward Said, an Orientalism in which the East is constructed by a West that thereby seeks to assert its dominance.’83 This simplicity is complicated, however, not only by the fact that, as Hertel says, there are multiple identities contained within both ‘East’ and ‘West’ in the play, but also because even within the individual categories of ‘Ottoman’, ‘Persian’ or ‘English’, the apparently stable identities are less fixed than they at first seem. The Persians themselves appear to have a particular set of associations or characteristics, in which their distinct religious identity is prominent, alongside their clemency and hospitality.84 The Persians’ Shi’ite identity is made clear; they are devotees of ‘Mortus Ali’ as opposed to the Ottomans who are devoted to ‘Mahomet’ alone (i.87). Furthermore, in response to the shah’s inquiry as to the differences between Persian and Christian, Anthony explains that ‘our inward offices/Are most at jar’ (i.174–5), but that in all other ways they are the same, in a speech that ends in a plea for religious unity: All that makes up this earthly edifice By which we are called men is all alike. Each may be the other’s anatomy; […] One workman made us all, and all offend That maker, all taste of interdicted sin. […] We live and die, suffer calamities, Are underlings to sickness, fire, famine, sword. We are all punished by the same hand and rod, Our sins are all alike; why not our God? (i.164–6, 170–1, 177–80)

Anthony’s conversation with the shah is interrupted, so the audience is only able to guess at how ‘Abb¯as might have responded to this question, but his previous behaviour suggests his willingness to tolerate and even 82 Mehdizadeh, ‘Robert Sherley and the Persian Habit’, p. 62. 83 Hertel, ‘Ousting the Ottomans’, p. 137. 84 On this see Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’. Kaufman considers The Travailes in detail in Chapter Two of her thesis.

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promote a Christian presence in Persia. ‘Abb¯as’s positive response to the English brothers concludes in his agreement to allow Robert to build a church, baptise his Persian-born son and educate Christian children living in Persia in his own faith. With regard to the baptism, the shah exceeds the basic demand that he permit the ceremony and offers to stand as godfather to the child: Baptize thy child, ourself will aid in it; Ourself will answer for’t, a godfather. In our own arms we’ll bear it to the place Where it shall receive the complete ceremony. (xiii.172–5)

The shah’s reference to his intention to ‘make thy child the first Christian in the land’ (xiii.202) hints at the prospect of a larger Christian community in Persia, and perhaps gestures towards his own conversion, in keeping with Nixon’s statement that the shah not only stood as godfather to Robert’s children but is responding to the efforts of Robert, who ‘labours the king very much to Christianisme’.85 The audience of The Travailes would have been aware that only a Christian could perform the role of godfather in the Christian rite of baptism. Hence the political model offered by The Travailes is one of mutual respect and mutual reinforcement. The English offer the Persians military and tactical advice as well as a model of morality and restraint; the Persians offer the English the prospect of trade and empire in the Muslim East. The Persian form of kingship imagined here is far removed from the tyranny associated with Persia in earlier plays, a feat largely achieved via the figure of Abb¯as himself as an erudite and tolerant king. Arguably, then, the version of Persia offered in The Travailes is as much reduced to the figure of its monarch as that presented by earlier plays of Persia. Through Abb¯as, the Persia presented in contemporary European travel writing seemed to offer unparalleled opportunities of trade and diplomacy to the English audience. The idea promoted in the Day, Rowley and Wilkins’ play that the English could take on this dual role as both counsellors and objects of adoration to the Persians suggested that they could develop a sustainable presence in the Muslim world, which would become more Christian as a result of that presence.

85 Nixon, The Three English Brothers, K4v.

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But this proto-colonial reading is complicated by the text itself. For one thing, the notion of the English as objects of admiration for the Persians was difficult to sustain, even in the imagination, as others have argued. As Casellas states: this imperialistic scripting of Persian inferiority was too clearly based on a blatant historical distortion to be taken as the only available or acceptable reading of scene one, since Persians knew and actually manufactured artillery, and firearms and gunpowder were well known in Persia long before the arrival of the Sherleys, as some authors had already explained to their English readership […] this play does not produce an imperial or proto- colonial rhetoric in a straightforward way.86

Mark Hutchings has considered other aspects of the play which serve to destabilise the Sherley project, as presented in the play.87 Moreover, the English-as-advisors role was clearly not sustainable either. Robert Sherley himself was something between an employee and a prisoner in Persia. In Europe, he took on a hybrid status and as a result fitted in nowhere. As Hutchings has pointed out, the presentation of the English brothers in The Travailes depends on a set of motifs and tropes inherited from romance: ‘The Sherleys are portrayed as aspiring above all to the heroism of the literary epic: throughout the audience is reminded of the brothers’ integrity and courage, their adventures troped as patriotic sacrifice.’88 If Persia itself did not have a stable enough set of identities to allow the imagined model of proto-colonial activity to be successful, then neither was England’s role as empire-builder sufficiently established for the fantasy of the English-as-counsellors to be upheld. Perhaps even a play as ostensibly in favour of closer Anglo-Persian relations as The Travailes could not avoid the fact that, for all the optimism around those relations, Persia would have little need of England for military support or political counsel, and would not serve as the idealised pro-English hope of stability in the Muslim world that the play both projected and simultaneously denied. And the Sherley brothers themselves are problematic figures

86 Casellas, ‘The Travailes of the Three English Brothers and the Textual Construction of Early Modern Identities’, 260, 271. 87 Hutchings, ‘Staging the Sherleys’ Travails’, 56. 88 Hutchings, ‘Staging the Sherleys’ Travails’, 49.

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on which to build a sustainable notion of English heroism or empirebuilding; as Hutchings comments, ‘Their desire for fame explodes the notion of the Sherleys as selfless servants of a cause’.89 Neither the imagined empire of Persia, nor the imagined empire-building of the Sherley brothers, can be sustained under the pressure placed on them by the dramatic fictions of the play. The play constitutes a historical revisioning in which both Persia and the Sherleys are rewritten beyond all recognition.90

Conclusion The Sherley brothers’ travels in Persia and the Ottoman empire took place at a time when England was seeking to establish its own presence on the world stage and to develop its own imperial ambitions, and Persia and the Ottoman empire both offered useful backgrounds for exploring what that presence might be, and how far those ambitions might extend. In the end, The Travailes defeats its own attempts to imagine a role for a powerful England in the Muslim East. Despite the fact that it provides a more detailed version of Persia than other plays of Persia to this date, and in doing so appears to complicate the simple binaries of an East–West divide, not least in demonstrating that English audiences were interested in Persia as a complex place, the play nonetheless inevitably views Persia only through an English gaze and constructs it for the English imagination. As Ralf Hertel writes: Despite its tendency to question binary East–West oppositions, the play generally supports the logic of an East animated by the English gaze. No world exists outside the England-Spain-Persia triangle mapped out by the brothers; there is no world beyond that desired by the English. […] If the English perspective on the East is essentially ambivalent, a mixture of admiration and the fear of losing control, so is our perspective on a play that is also both admirably bold in its scope and overwhelmingly unpredictable in its plethora of plots, places and protagonists. (pp. 147–8, p. 151)

89 Hutchings, ‘Staging the Sherleys’ Travails’, 50. 90 Nedda Mehdizadeh notes that ‘In this revision of historical events, the play attempts

to reposition Robert as an ally to the Persians who truly wishes to advance Christian ideals rather than a vindictive Christian-turned- Persian who has wholly succumbed to Persian war tactics. […] The conclusion of the play solidifies an imagined Anglo-Persian alliance due to Robert’s efforts, an alliance the real-life Robert was never able to achieve.’ See Mehdizadeh, ‘Robert Sherley and the Persian Habit’, p. 68.

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The Travailes could only be set in contemporary Safavid rather than classical Achaemenid Persia, because it sought to focus attention on English encounters with Persia in the present day, and to re-imagine England’s relationship with Persia in the immediate future. Safavid Persia would endure as a focus for seventeenth-century drama although, as we will see in the next chapter, Achaemenid Persia continued to provide a useful setting for thinking through issues relevant to English domestic politics.

CHAPTER 6

‘Read[ing] Philosophy to a King’: Ideals of Monarchy in William Cartwright’s The Royall Slave (1636)

Introduction: The Sherleys and the Failure of a ‘Diplomatic Fiction’ The modern editor of The Travailes of the Three English Brothers, Anthony Parr, refers to the Sophy’s granting of Robert’s petition with which the play ends as a ‘diplomatic fiction’, intended to confirm ‘the openness of Shi’ite Islam to the beneficial example of Christianity’.1 Though fictional, given James VI & I’s attitude to Persia and the Sherleys, such a gesture, Parr points out, was not ‘entirely illusory’: the vision of reciprocity conjured by Anthony in praising his homeland to the Sophy […] is precisely the kind of gesture that was being made in numerous cultural encounters in the Americas and the Far East, where recognition of an analogous structure of authority was the easiest (and often the only) way of creating confidence on both sides.2

In the story of the Sherley brothers, considered in the last chapter, attempts in England to promote the notion that the Christian homeland might have an analogous structure of authority with Shi’ite Persia 1 Parr, ed., Three Renaissance Travel Plays, Introduction, p. 16. 2 Parr, Three Renaissance Travel Plays, p. 16.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Houston, Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699, New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22618-2_6

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would be complicated by the failures experienced by the brothers themselves to achieve closer relationships between European and Safavid states. After several months in Persia, Anthony returned to Europe in 1599 in company with an eminent Persian, Husayn’ Ali Beg, on an ambassadorial visit on the shah’s behalf to a series of European courts.3 This did not include England’s; initially forbidden by Elizabeth I to return to England because of his unauthorised departure, Anthony lived out his years mostly in Spain, where he died in 1633.4 Robert, meanwhile, remained in Persia in the service of ‘Abb¯as, returning to Europe himself as ‘Abb¯as’s ambassador in 1609; he subsequently spent two extended periods in London, from 1611 to 1613, and from 1623 to 1627.5 As Sheiba Kian Kaufman explains in her recent study of English plays of Persia, the failure of Robert’s second embassy to England was in part due to its lack of cohesion. Robert was accompanied on this visit by another ambassador, a Persian man named Naqd ‘Al¯ı Beg; both men claimed to be the shah’s true representative, with the result that the new king, Charles I, ‘sent the entire party back to Persia with Sir Dodmore Cotton as official English ambassador’, with the aim of clarifying the issue, developing diplomatic relations and pursuing the silk trade. Thus ‘the first official embassy since that of Anthony Jenkinson under Elizabeth included the Sherleys, Naqd ‘Al¯ı Beg, Sh¯ahsuw¯ar’s son, and Thomas Herbert who documented the ill-fated embassy’.6 Soon after his return to Persia, Robert Sherley died there, in disfavour with ‘Abb¯as, in July of 1628; his death was shortly followed by that of Cotton and then Naqd ‘Al¯ı Beg. In something of an understatement, Herbert wrote that ‘the burial of our three ambassadors was no small discouragement to the progress of our travel’; the embassy was unsuccessful in its aims, and its remaining members soon returned to England.7 One outcome of the Cotton embassy and the continued English interest in Persia was an increase of travel writings about Persia published in England, the most prominent being Herbert’s A Relation of Some

3 Steensgaard, The Asian Trade Revolution of the Seventeenth Century, pp. 213–14. 4 Subrahmanyam, Three Ways To Be Alien, p. 116. 5 Davies, Elizabethans Errant, p. 236, p. 240, p. 259, p. 272. 6 Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’, p. 7. 7 Thomas Herbert, Some years travels into divers parts of Africa, and Asia the great describing more particularly the empires of Persia and Industan (1677), p. 214.

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Yeares Travail, first printed in 1634. In reading one play of Persia which drew on this renewal of interest, William Cartwright’s The Royall Slave (1636), this chapter will argue that playwrights continued to use Persia to offer ‘beneficial examples’ to England through suggesting at ‘analogous structure[s] of authority’; in the case of The Royall Slave, the structures concerned are those of ideal king and ideal counsellor, located against an idealised classical Persian past which both draws on contemporary travel writing about Persia and demonstrates a continuity with the developing tradition of plays of Persia. The Royall Slave involves a return to a notion of classical Persia as an idealised state; the imagined Persian empire serves as a backdrop for exploring political customs, but there is no effort at portraying Persia in a positive light in order to promote a closer relationship, as in The Travailes. The Royall Slave is thus not a diplomatic fiction, but an imaginative engagement with classical Persia in the wake of diplomatic failure. As we have observed in earlier plays of Persia, however, Cartwright’s play repeatedly undercuts the image of Persia as an idealised state, in part due to the presence of the travel writings about Persia which abounded at the time of the play’s first performances, and in part through its recognition of the pitfalls of absolute kingship. Travel writing about Persia which emerged from the Sherleys’ travels and Dodmore Cotton’s embassy to Persia often blended descriptions of Achaemenid Persia into the accounts of its contemporary state, creating an image of a country reinventing itself and reclaiming its glorious past. John Cartwright’s The Preachers’ Travels. Wherein is set downe a true Journall, to the confines of the East Indies, through the great countreys of Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Media, Hircania and Parthia, an account of his journeys to places including countries that are now part of Iran, which was first printed in 1611, in an example of such a text. Although the title page of The Preachers’ Travels identifies John Cartwright as both a preacher and ‘sometimes student in Magdalen Colledge in Oxford’, there is no evidence of him having either taken holy orders or studied at Magdalen, though it is possible that he was a student there without taking a degree.8 Samuel Purchas included an abridged version of Cartwright’s account as

8 Natalya Din-Kariuki, ‘Gifted travellers: rhetorical invention in seventeenth-century English travel writing’ (DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 2018), p. 148. Din-Kariuki also cites Anthony Wood’s statement that John Cartwright ‘seems to have been descended from the Cartwrights of Washbourne in Gloucestershire’, but again there is no further evidence on this point.

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the ‘Observation of Master John Cartwright in his voyage from Aleppo to Hispaan’ in his collection of English travel writings published in 1625, Purchas His Pilgrimes. Cartwright’s text thus reached a wider audience in the 1620s, and would have been easily available to the playwrights who turned to Persia for inspiration during this period. Cartwright’s initial descriptions of Isfahan suggest that he was impressed by Persian wealth and opulence, its cities ‘very famous and rich’, the ‘Palaces of great state and magnificence’ with ‘Carpets wrought of silke and Gold’, and by the shah’s tolerance of his English visitors, whom he treated with ‘bountie and goodnesse’.9 Shah Abb¯as himself appears to Cartwright as tyrannical in his looks, but courteous in his behaviour: due to his ‘martiall disposition, and inexorable nature’, ‘at first a man would thinke [him] to have no thing in him, but mischief and crueltie’, although in fact ‘he is of nature courteous, and affable, easie to be seene and spoken with.’10 This discrepancy between the shah’s appearance and what is perceived to be his inner nature reflects an ambiguity in his portrayal in English travel writing which was to increase in later accounts. In The Preachers’ Travels Cartwright encounters Safavid Persia with the glories of ancient Persia very much in mind, although he notes that he is not always able to reflect on ancient Persia as much as he might have wished, due to reasons of space. He writes in the dedicatory letter: I might haue added many worthy collections, as well out of sacred as prophane writers, that haue written of the most stately and magnificent Empire of the Medes and Persians in times past, and so haue compared it, with the moderne and present estate thereof; which hath scarce a shadow of the antique Gouernment, wherewith it was then ruled and gouerned. But the matter would haue proued too long, & made this volume too great:

9 John Cartwright, ‘Observations of Master John Cartwright in his Voyage from Aleppo to Hispaan, and backe againe: published by himselfe, and here contracted’, in Purchas His Pilgrimes In five bookes, ed. by Samuel Purchas (1625), 4 vols, vol. 4, p. 1432. 10 Cartwright, ‘Observations of Master John Cartwright’, p. 1433. Due to various discrepancies in the text, the modern reader knows that Cartwright was not present at some of the events he describes; on this see Parker, Early Modern Tales of Orient, p. 82.

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and therefore for those aduertisements, I purpose to put them forth, when God shal make me strong and able. 11

Despite this omission, Cartwright frequently compares the Persians to their forebears, noting in Isfahan, for example, that Persian people ride like Parthians.12 As Ladan Niayesh notes, Cartwright also takes a ‘biblical interest’ in the Persian sites that he visits: His report of the Achaemenid tombs exemplifies a biblical approach to Persia that, Rudi Matthee contends, is still sometimes encountered in early modern European travellers’ accounts, even though it is on the wane overall in this period.13

Achaemenid Persia is clearly present for Cartwright throughout his travels, merging with the sights and experiences that he encounters as a traveller in a foreign land. Cartwright’s description of Abb¯as’ governance is one area where he displays an interest in describing modern practice in detail. His account emphasises the centrality of the shah, whom he calls ‘the king’, in reinventing and ruling Persia, which is evident throughout his description. Abb¯as is in charge of everything: ‘the king keepeth certaine orders of souldiers’; ‘for the gouernment of this Citie, there is besides the King and the Prince twelue Sultanes, but three especially are appointed by the King, for the generall gouernement of the whole Empire’; ‘And looke as Hispaan [Isfahan] is gouerned, so other Cities haue the selfe same Magistrates, all being at the kings disposition and appointment’.14 It is Abb¯as himself who has achieved the enlarging and refounding of the Persian empire: ‘the king that now is, who by his valour hath so largely 11 John Cartwright, The preachers travels Wherein is set downe a true journall to the confines of the East Indies, through the great countreyes of Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Media, Hircania and Parthia (1611), p. 49. 12 Cartwright, The preachers travels, p. 63. 13 Ladan Niayesh, ‘Reterritorializing Persepolis

in the First English Travellers’ Accounts’, in Beyond Greece and Rome: Reading the Ancient Near East in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Jane Grogan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 115–131 (p. 122), citing Rudi Matthee, ‘The Safavids under Western Eyes: Seventeenth-Century European Travelers to Iran’, Journal of Early Modern History, 13.2–3 (2009), 137–71 (p. 142). 14 Cartwright, The preachers travels, pp. 62–63.

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dilated the confines of his kingdome, that it seemeth he hath (as it were) founded it anew.’15 Cartwright often communicates an impression of both the Persians’ and Abb¯as’ moral failings, but nonetheless often returns to the notion of what Europe may learn from Persia. When describing Abb¯as’ role in the administration of justice, Cartwright compares Persia’s judicial system to that of France, both past and present: the King very often in this place, in the presence of the Princes and Peeres of the Realme, will give judgement in divers causes: much like unto the ancient kings of France, who used ordinarily to heare the complaints of their subjects; but of late yeares the more the pitie, they have committed this businesse unto the consciences of subordinate officers, hearing by other mens eares, and seeing by other mens eyes, well nigh concerning all their affaires: which course the Persian King holdeth neither good nor comfortable for the people, nor yet by any means to further Justice.16

Abb¯as’ control over the justice system has led, Cartwright contends, to a vast reduction in crime: ‘he punisheth theft & manslaughter so severely, that in an age a man shall not heare eyther of the one or of the other’. This ‘severity’, according to Cartwright, is again something that Europe might learn from. Here, he comes closer to suggesting that England might be the intended target of such an example of effective governance: ‘this severity were very needfull for some parts of Christendome, I will not say for England (though we haue faulted therein) but for France especially’.17 Despite the centrality of Abb¯as in achieving this exemplary level of control, Cartwright notes on a number of occasions that Abb¯as is also capable of listening to advice. His description of the role of counsel in Abb¯as’s in government is fragmentary, but can be traced at certain moments in the narrative. One such is the account of the shah’s eventual persuasion by Anthony Sherley’s rhetoric: Many such speeches passed from Sir Anthony, but most of the chiefe counsellours were obstinately bent against it at the first; howbeit the King

15 Cartwright, The preachers travels, p. 53. 16 Cartwright, The preachers travels, p. 66. 17 Cartwright, The preachers travels, p. 67.

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being still animated by his forcible perswasions, and his Generall, Oliuerchan a Georgian Christian furthering the busines in the end with the rest of his Councell consented thereto.18

Such encounters evidence Cartwright’s impression that Abb¯as would hear the counsel of his advisors even when they disagreed with him, and that, through discussion, they would achieve a decision. But Cartwright is too aware of what he perceives as the tyranny of the Persian regime to admire it wholeheartedly, or do more than hint at the potential benefits for England in regarding it. His account also suggests the weakness of Persian kingship as an institution, not least the possibility that the people may rise up and kill a king if he does not fulfil his role adequately: And certainly, where such carelesnes doth enter into the majesty of kings, the estate of the Realme cannot chuse but be weakned, & the majesty royal imbased, so that in the end (it might be shewed) the people have not refused to rise against the person of the king, & somtimes to murder him.19

The prospect of regicide tentatively raised in The Preacher’s Travels demonstrates the ways in which Persian tyranny could serve as an implied warning to its English readership about the dangers of a king who may stray into ‘carelesnes’. An event which took place between the first publication of The Preacher’s Travels and its inclusion in Purchas His Pilgrimes is likely to have strengthened English interest in material about Persia and its shah. In May 1622 Ormuz, the fortified Portuguese port on the Persian Gulf was captured by a joint Anglo-Persian force, when Abb¯as persuaded the East India Company to join with him to attack the settlement.20 As a result, English hopes for better trading conditions in Persia were kept alive, although these were not to be realised, with the EIC seeing little increase in trade as a result.21 Nonetheless, in the 1620 s, interest in Persia continued; as Kaufman writes: 18 Cartwright, The preachers travels, p. 69. 19 Cartwright, The preachers travels, p. 67. 20 Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 182. 21 Rudolph Matthee, The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600–1730

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 106.

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Perhaps because prospects in the region remained unclear, with the tragedies of the 1626 embassy to Persia coexisting with the success of the Anglo-Persian forces in aiding Shah Abb¯as to capture the island of Ormuz from the Portuguese in 1622, Charles remained invested in Persia.22

Thomas Herbert’s travels in Persia with the Cotton embassy which took place at the end of this decade are evidence of this continuing investment. Herbert returned to England in 1630 and published his first account of his time in Persia in 1634, A Description of the Persian Monarchy Now Beinge: The Orientall Indyes Iles and Other Parts of Greater Asia and Africk; this was followed by an expanded second edition in 1638, entitled Some Yeares Travels into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique, which sold well and soon appeared in Dutch and French editions. Like Cartwright’s, Herbert’s account of Isfahan records its wealth and beauty; he notes that the city is ‘pleasant […] elegant […] rich in trade’. Herbert’s report of Cotton’s reception by Shah Abb¯as emphasises the shah’s friendliness and the respect paid to his English guests, although the bulk of his references to Abb¯as attest to his impression of the shah’s cruelty and capacity for tyranny. Here again we see the image portrayed earlier by John Cartwright, of a ruler who seemingly combines both hospitable and tyrannical elements. Like Cartwright, Herbert’s narrative suggests that classical Persia was never far from his thoughts. He emphasises the continuity between classical and contemporary Persia: ‘These Persae are descended of the ancient Persians, who adored fire. For the Persians, that now inhabit Persia, are extract from Scythia, and came hither with Tamberlaine, or the Turko-mans ’.23 In visiting Isfahan, ‘the greatest and best built City throughout the Orient’, Herbert enjoyed what Boies Penrose has called an ‘antiquarian frolic’ in the ancient summer capital of the Achaemenids.24 Like Cartwright, Herbert notes the control that Abb¯as has, both in ruling the empire and in administering local justice. He considers the behaviour that a king should exhibit, in order to contrast it to Abb¯as’s severity: 22 Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’, p. 132. 23 Thomas Herbert, A relation of some yeares trauaile begunne anno 1626. Into Afrique

and the greater Asia, especially the territories of the Persian monarchie (1634), p. 40. 24 Boies Penrose, Urbane Travellers, 1591–1635 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1942), p. 187.

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A Prince (exalted above others in dignity and Title) is tyed to an impartiall way, neither hating nor fearing any, but rewarding and punishing as cause requireth; without which, contempt or confusion followeth. But to these of Abb¯ as I cannot give the glorious Attribute of Justice: since, if the punishment exceed the fault, it then degenerates into cruelty: a vice, odious to God, (the Father and fountaine of mercy:) to men, by imitating their deformities; conceiting any Act, though never so unnaturall (if moulded after such a pattern) good and commendable.25

Abb¯as’s tendency to personal cruelty has led to his role becoming that of tyrant; hence, Herbert’s professed desire that ‘perpetuall amity might be continued ‘twixt the two famous Monarks of Great Brittayn and Persia’ is overshadowed by his lamenting of what he perceives to be the shah’s personal failings.26 In recounting Abb¯as’s cruel treatment of his own son, which will be the focus of the next chapter, Herbert conveys his shock at the shah’s inversion of what he sees as the role suitable to a father: Is not Abb¯ as a King, a Father? does clemency belong to any attribute so properly? Is not Soffee-Sultan-mirza a Prince, his sonne? on whom can he more justly conferre his love? in whom should vertue rather dwell? where can there be a better center? poore Prince!27

The representation of Shah Abb¯as and his rule in Persia is thus shown to be complex and ambiguous in the travel writings which circulated in England in the 1620s and 1630s. English travellers showed admiration for his strength and achievements, and speculated on his links to a glorious classical past; whether impressed by his good governance or appalled his tyrannical leanings, they offered Abb¯as to English audiences, either as model or as warning, in the advice-to-princes tradition. Meanwhile the image of classical Persia was never far from the surface of contemporary travel literature. These factors, combined with the shifting nature and lack of clarity surrounding Anglo-Persian relations, meant that the

25 Thomas Herbert, Some yeares travels into divers parts of Asia and Afrique (1638), p. 178. 26 Herbert, Some Yeares Travels, p. 170. 27 Herbert, Some Yeares Travels, p. 174.

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Persia empire remained open to interpretation by the English imagination, unfixed and ambiguous in its relation to England. In reading The Royall Slave, this chapter will focus the representation of kingship via one classical king of Persia, Arsamnes, and one fictional king, Cratander, arguing that these representations were intended to appeal to Charles and his court and thus sought to recall the glory of Persia’s past rather than the more ambiguous status it held in writings about contemporary Persia.

William Cartwright and The Royall Slave William Cartwright was born in 1611 and educated at Westminster and Oxford, where he will have encountered Persia via classical authors during his studies.28 Cartwright’s modern editor, G. Blakemore Evans, has speculated that William may also have been related to John Cartwright; though evidence for this is scant, it would give a pleasing potential route by which the playwright might come across the Persian empire for material.29 However he encountered Persia, Cartwright turned to it for his third and most successful play, and the first to receive ‘more than academic recognition’, The Royall Slave, which was first performed for Charles I and Henrietta Maria during their visit to Oxford in 1636.30 The play is not well known today, described by Evans as having ‘relatively little of interest’ to modern tastes. Cartwright’s contemporaries, however, including the Lord Chamberlain and Archbishop Laud, heaped praises upon it.31 It also seems to have been popular with its royal audience; Charles is said to

28 On the curriculum at Oxford see Mordechai Feingold, ‘The Humanities’, in The History of the University of Oxford: The Seventeenth Century, ed. by Nicholas Tyacke, 8 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), vol. 4, pp. 211–358. 29 G. Blakemore Evans, ed., The Plays and Poems of William Cartwright (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1951), p. 10. 30 Evans, Plays and Poems, p. 13. 31 Evans, Plays and Poems, p. 171.

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have commended the play as ‘the best that ever was acted’,32 and Henrietta requested that ‘she might see her own Players act it over again’;33 the play was performed in London at the court’s expense the following year.34 The Royall Slave was printed three times in the seventeenth century: at Oxford in 1639 and 1640, and in 1651 as part of the posthumous collected Works.35 As Kevin Sharpe has argued, to dismiss the play would be to miss its value as an examination of monarchy and government; its ‘searching examination of the nature and qualities of kingship’36 demonstrate an engagement with political debate typical of the drama of the 1630s.37 The Royall Slave stems from a period in which Cartwright was interested in examining court politics; his The Lady-Errant (1636–1637), as Jane Farnsworth has shown, also engaged with issues such as ‘the king’s personal rule, and the role of women, particularly the queen, in the political life of the kingdom’.38 While Farnsworth sees The Lady-Errant as a counter-attack on the king’s side in ‘the theatrical campaign waged by the queen and her supporters to put pressure on the king to enter the European war against Spain’, The Royall Slave rather seeks to align the positions of king and queen. In addition, just as Farnsworth has demonstrated the greater political meaning of The Lady-Errant, an examination of the Persian context of The Royall Slave shows that the play has a political relevance in which that context is active.

32 John Evelyn, Memoirs illustrative of the life and writings of John Evelyn, ed. by W. Bray, 2 vols (1819), vol. 1, p. 662, quoted in Dennis Flynn, ‘Cartwright, William (1611– 1643)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004), http://dx.doi.org/10. 1093/ref:odnb/4823 [accessed 9 August 2022]. 33 Anthony Wood, History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, ed. by John

Gutch, 2 vols (Oxford, 1792–1796), vol. 2, p. 412, quoted in Evans, Plays and Poems, p. 180. 34 Evans, Plays and Poems, p. 183. 35 Evans, Plays and Poems, p. 165. 36 Kevin Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the England

of Charles I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 50. 37 See for example Martin Butler, Theatre and Crisis 1632–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 1. 38 Jane Farnsworth, ‘Defending the King in Cartwright’s The Lady-Errant (1636– 1637)’, Studies in English Literature, 4.2 (2002), 381–98 (p. 382).

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This play has been discussed by several scholars,39 but not as a text in which the Persian setting or the presentation of Persians have seemed especially relevant. Persia is, however, a definite presence in The Royall Slave, and one which is now being reassessed; Kaufman explores the play’s Persian context in depth, demonstrating how ‘Persian culture is depicted as flexible, and Persia accepts and benefits from the virtuous stranger in this temporary instance of a hospitable temporality’ in her reading of the text.40 The action is set in Sardis, the former capital of Lydia, which is first referred to in European literature in Aeschylus’s The Persians (472 BCE), a play which Edith Hall describes as ‘the first unmistakable file in the archive of Orientalism, the discourse by which the European imagination has dominated Asia […] by conceptualizing its inhabitants as defeated, luxurious, emotional, cruel, and always as dangerous’.41 Until his defeat by the Persians, Lydia was ruled in the sixth-century BCE by Croesus, renowned for his wealth and the splendour of his court. As well as the setting, the reader is informed that the actors appeared in Persian ‘Habits’, according to the dramatis personae;42 the play also uses Persian names, such as those of King Arsamnes and Queen Atossa. Arš¯ama (Arsamnes or Arsames in Greek) was the name of several Achaemenid notables, the best known of whom was ruler of Persia in the sixth-century BCE and

39 Linda McJannet has listed the play as one set in Persia, but otherwise its Persian context and setting have been neglected. Other references to, or discussions of, the text include: W. G. Rice, ‘The Sources of William Cartwright’s The Royall Slave’, Modern Language Notes, 45 (1930), 515–18; Samuel Chew, The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England During the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1937), pp. 514–17; James E. Ruoff, ‘Cartwright’s human sacrifice scene in The Royal Slave’, Notes & Queries, 4 (1957); Leslie Howard Martin, ‘“Aureng-Zebe” and the Ritual of the Persian King,’ Modern Philology, 71 (1973), 169–71; Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment; Scott Paul Gordon, ‘The Cultural Politics of William Cartwright’s Royal Slave’, in In the Company of Shakespeare: Essays on English Renaissance Literature in Honor of G. Blakemore Evans, ed. by Thomas Moisan and Douglas Bruster (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002), pp. 251–69; Hero Chalmers, Royalist Women Writers 1650–1689 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), pp. 48–9; Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’, Chapter Three. 40 Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’, p. 162. 41 Hall, Inventing the Barbarian, p. 99. This Saidian reading of The Persians has been

critiqued in recent years (see, for example, Niayesh, ‘Shakespeare’s Persians,’ 138). 42 William Cartwright, The Royall Slave, in The Plays and Poems of William Cartwright, ed. by G. Blakemore Evans (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1951), ‘The Persons of the Play’, p. 199. All further references to the text will be to this edition and will be given in parentheses in the text.

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grandfather of Darius I; the name is also recorded by Herodotus. Atossa was an Achaemenid queen who was the daughter of Cyrus the Great, the wife of Darius I, and featured prominently in Aeschylus’ play.43 Kaufman notes that her name was erroneously identified in the early modern period with Esther, wife of Ahasuerus;44 this opens up the potential existence of a tenuous link between the action of The Royall Slave and Godly Queene Hester, the subject of Chapter Two. Atossa’s identity in The Royall Slave is firmly Persian, and Persian practices, such as sun-worship, are referred to throughout.45 More specifically, Cartwright makes use of a Persian custom involving the crowning of a slave or citizen for a period of three days, who is then killed. This practice is the premise for the action of the play, in which, following the Persian capture of Ephesus, the Ephesian slave Cratander is made king for three days by Arsamnes. Cratander is to be granted full regal powers for the duration of his reign, but will be put to death at its end. Cratander, who from his first appearance has exhibited ‘a serious and Majestique looke’ (I.ii.106), proves to be a natural ruler and exemplary philosopher-king, putting the interests of Persia above all others and avoiding the various temptations and pitfalls that are put in his way by jealous Persian lords and his fellow Ephesian captives. At the end of the play, Arsamnes is so convinced of Cratander’s worth that he seeks to rescind his death sentence; this reprieve is finally delivered by the eclipse of the sun which, to the sun-worshipping Persians, is taken as a sign that the gods mean Cratander to live.46 As a reward for his actions, Arsamnes declares his intention to make Cratander a king in Greece, ‘that what was meant/For sport and mirth, may prove a serious honour’ (V.vii.1599–1600), and the tragic ending of Cratander’s death is avoided. Despite the lack of references to a specific historical period 43 See A. Sh. Shahbazi, ‘Arš¯ ama’, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, Volume 2 (1986), https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/arsama-greek-arsmes-aramaic-rsm-nameof-several-achaemenid-notables [Accessed 9 August 2022]; R. Schmitt, ‘Atossa’, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, Volume 2 (1986), https://iranicaonline.org/articles/atossa-achaem enid-queen [Accessed 9 August 2022]. 44 Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’, pp. 149–50. 45 In the play’s prologue, for example, ‘One of the Persian Magi [is] discover’d in a

Temple worshipping the Sunne’ (line 195). Here the practice of sun-worship is used to flatter Charles I, who is a ‘neerer and more glorious Sun’ (line 2). 46 On the play’s use of sun-worship, see for example Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’, p. 151, p. 165.

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in the play, the general setting and the use of the names Arsamnes and Atossa suggest that The Royall Slave is set in Achaemenid Persia, ‘the foreign land which, more than any other, cast its shadow over the classical Greek world’.47 As Kaufman has observed, The Royall Slave is also ‘the first Persian-themed play to systematically and strategically integrate seventeenth-century English knowledge of Persia’s ancient faith, Zoroastrianism, and its Mithraic associations into its setting and plot’.48 Cartwright’s play is informative about the continuing interest in Persia in the 1620s and 1630s. Like The Sophy and Mirza, the subjects of the next chapter, The Royall Slave can be read as a text which not only displayed a fascination with the Orient but which also found Persia a convenient backdrop for discussing contemporary political questions, representing an open space in which different values could be debated and promoted. The Persian context of the The Royall Slave is thus central to any reading of the text within its own political environment, and to placing it within a wider trend in 1630s drama, which ‘persistently engage[d] in debating the political issues of its day’.49 It is also typical of academic drama of the period, which frequently presented a negotiation of different values and an assertion of certain benefits as a means of educating its audience.50 Via Cratander, the play both offers examples to the English court and reflects contemporary conflicting or ambiguous attitudes to Persia, a state seen at once as luxurious and feminised, but also capable of good governance and offering a successful model of kingship. The Royall Slave clearly sought to appeal to, and flatter, its royal audience, but also attempted to offer guidance on matters of governance through the various examples provided via a Persian court. In doing so, it relies on the figure of Cratander as both temporary king and adviser to the king, both Ephesian and temporary Persian.51

47 Thomas Harrison, ‘Introduction to Part III’, in Greeks and Barbarians, ed. by Thomas Harrison (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002), p. 189. 48 Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’, p. 164. 49 Butler, Theatre and Crisis, p. 1. 50 See Jonathan Walker, Introduction to Early Modern Academic Drama, ed. by

Jonathan Walker and Paul D. Streufert (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). 51 Kaufman notes that ‘In his temporary Persian habit, Cratander whole-heartedly and humbly assumes his Persian persona as both an object of Persian servitude and an adherent of the Persian religion’; Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’, p. 160.

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Kingship in The Royall Slave The most obvious example that the play offers to its royal audience is not via a Persian character at all, but through the figure of Cratander as the ideal philosopher-king. At every level, the other characters respond to Cratander as both learned and a natural leader. At Cratander’s first appearance on the stage, Arsamnes exclaims ‘There comes one/Arm’d with a serious and Majestique looke, /As if hee’d read Philosophy to a King’ (I.ii.105–7). Cratander’s reading of philosophy, ‘a discourse o’th’ Nature of the Soule’ (I.ii.111), demonstrates his own capacity for learning, and throughout the play he puts his knowledge into practice. The Persian lord Hydarnes gives an early, comprehensive assessment of Cratander’s virtues: Hee’s one that knowes, and dares preserve his own Honour, and others too; a man as free From wronging any, as himself; he beares A Kingdome in his looke; a kingdome that Consists of Beauty, seasoned with Discreation. His Graces are virile, and comely too: Grave, and severe delights so tempering The softnesse of his other pleasures, that A settled full content doth thence arise. (I.iv.271–279)

Even Molops the jailer recognises Cratander as one who ‘Speakes well, and like a good Common-wealth’s-man’ (III.ii.771–2). Although this particular term may constitute a less than sincere accolade, it does not weaken Cratander’s presentation as a natural king who makes the best use of the opportunities available to him. It is unsurprising, then, that on being crowned for three days by Arsamnes, Cratander immediately talks and acts like a born monarch; his first thought is not for himself, but for the reinforcement of the Persian military victory (I.ii.193–5), and he puts the interests of Persia ahead of those of Ephesus, refusing to ‘betray the Persians’ (II.vi.587) to his compatriots. Later, he manages the best possible compromise for Ephesus, and in supporting the interests of Persia he benefits his own country, ‘That like a river running’twixt two fields, /I may give growth and verdure unto both’ (III.iv.970–4). Not only does Cratander achieve a degree of freedom for Ephesus, but he convinces Arsamnes of his virtue and suitability for kingship; the Ephesians are transformed from slaves into a people ruled by a prince ‘chosen from out

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themselves’, and Arsamnes himself has ‘gaine[d] a Friend’ (V.vii.1605, 1608). The play presents Cratander as an ideal philosopher-king, but it also offers an example of kingship in the character of Arsamnes, as a king who can profit from example. During the play, Arsamnes undergoes a process of learning, in which he benefits from Cratander’s presence and transformation from ‘Slave’ to ‘Friend’ (V.ii.1608). Seeking to pardon Cratander at the end of the play, Arsamnes realises that he is effectively unable to prevent the Ephesian’s death. It is clear, however, that the Persian monarch realises the worth of the man who has become his friend, as he vows to ‘people all my Kingdome with thy Images, /To which they shall pay vowes’ (V.vi.1525–7), so that Cratander may have, beyond his death, ‘A life to florish in faire memory’ (V.vi.1524). Queen Atossa, who recognises Cratander’s worth from the beginning, plays an important part in convincing Arsamnes to trust and even emulate the three-day king. She suggests that Arsamnes should recognise points of equivalence between himself and the Ephesian: ‘Vertuous Cratander/Shewes forth so full a Transcript of your life, /In all but his misfortunes, that methinks/You may admire your selfe in him, as in/Your shade’ (III.v.1039–43). Cratander is offered to Arsamnes as a model of virtue, and during the play the Persian king undergoes a process of education in recognising the value of that model; the metatheatrical ‘shade’ serves as a reminder that Cratander only plays at being a king. Scott Paul Gordon has also seen Cratander as a model for the king, arguing that the slave ‘reflect[s] back to Charles […] his belief in the monarch’s capacity to transcend “interest politics”’. Gordon contends that the play opposes the ‘many driven by their passions and interests’ with ‘the few able to transcend them’, ‘preserving disinterestedness, a true desire for the public good, for the monarch’ while ‘demonizing others’.52 Arsamnes’ recognition of Cratander as a ‘friend’ signals another way in which the play understands the relationship between the two men, which is as king and his counsellor. Kaufman has read Cratander as functioning during his temporary rule ‘as an extension of Arsamnes’ being, solidifying and exalting the work he has begun as king of an expanding realm, and empowering himself through the place he temporarily inhabits’, not serving to ‘replace his host’ but rather to operate as an extension of his

52 Gordon, ‘The Cultural Politics of William Cartwright’s Royal Slave’, p. 254.

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function, ‘his bionic arm’.53 This relationship mimics that of monarch and counsellor, in which the counsellor occupies a privileged position in being permitted to speak truth to a king. It has been suggested that attending to counsel was not one of Charles I’s great strengths. In Jacqueline Rose’s words: Charles was not a king who tended to be amenable to counsel if it did contain the advice which he wished to hear. […] His general inability to accept criticism, however, alongside his ineptitude at even pretending to hear it, did much to destroy his kingship.54

In The Royall Slave, Charles was offered an image of kingship as a dynamic condition in which a monarch was in a continual state of learning and development through the counsel of others. In this context, the Persian court emerges as a space in which ideas of kingship can be evaluated and positive values asserted; Arsamnes is a king—and Persia a place—capable of learning through example. It is this flexibility or capacity to learn which strengthens Persia in the play, which ends with an alliance between the Persian conquerors and their new dominion. Through both kings, then, the play provides an education in kingship. As Sharpe has noted, it is not that either Arsamnes or Cratander is offered as an example to Charles I, as some have argued; rather, ‘the two depend on each other’.55 For Sharpe, this mutually beneficial relationship symbolises the need for a harmonious and mutually supportive affiliation between the king and the University of Oxford. More broadly, it can be taken as an example of kingship which works best when open to advice and good example. Thus, The Royall Slave demonstrates both the qualities needed in an individual king, and in a system of governance. In doing so, it offers examples for its audience’s consideration in the manner typical of academic drama of the period, which functioned in an educational manner as ‘a platform for humanistic scholars to imagine how they might 53 Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’, p. 161. 54 Jacqueline Rose, ‘Kingship and Counsel in Early Modern England’, The Historical

Journal, 54.1 (2011), 47–71 (62). 55 Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment, p. 50. On Arsamnes or Cratander as a model for, or alternative to, Charles, see Anne Barton, ‘“He that plays the king”: Ford’s Perkin Warbeck and the Stuart history play’, in Essays, Mainly Shakespearean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 234-60; Butler, Theatre and Crisis, p. 49; Gordon, ‘The Cultural Politics of William Cartwright’s Royal Slave’, p. 258.

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inaugurate change for the interests of a more ideal social sphere’.56 It can also be read within the context of the drama of the 1630s, which could reflect dissent and criticism, even within strict codes of censorship.57 Another way in which Cartwright offers an example to his royal audience, in this instance of both positive and negative qualities, is through the presentation of women at court, and the Persian court’s tendency to feminine opulence and decadence.58 From the opening scenes of the play, the Persian court at Sardis is associated with luxury and pleasure, which the incomer Cratander is quick to judge. At the beginning of Act 2, Cratander criticises the ‘big and pompous Luxury’ that he has observed in the court, associating it with ‘weaker mindes’ (II.i.346) and the ‘shee Minstrells’ (II.ii.401) who entertain them. Cratander’s natural mistrust of the Persians’ luxurious tastes is proved just when it becomes clear that Arsamnes intends to use courtly pleasures to tempt the slave away from his good intentions: ‘Let then/All the delights and pleasures, that a Slave/Admires in Kings be offer’d […] Musicke may subtly creepe/And rock his senses so, that all may sleepe’ (I.v.336–8, 340–1). The attempted use of music and ‘those baytes/Of wines, and meates’ (II.iii.418–9) to distract Cratander fails immediately, as he criticises the musicians for singing about love when ‘I did expect some solemne Hymne of the/Great world’s beginning, or some brave Captaines/Deserving deed extoll’d in lofty numbers’ (II.ii.397–399). Cratander proves obdurate in the face of temptation; like a ‘hard Rocke’ it is impossible to ‘soften him’ (II.ii.357). The slave-king’s ‘hardness’ is explicitly contrasted to the feminine ‘softness’ of the Persian court. Cratander’s own rejection of Persian luxury is thus presented in gendered terms. When the Persian lords leave Cratander alone with two women as a further temptation in their bid to ‘try him to the utmost’ (II.ii.368), Cratander at once has the women conveyed to jail, claiming that ‘My Country would twice suffer, should I yeeld/Unto their vices too’ (II.ii.438–9); these actions impress the watching queen so much that

56 Walker, Introduction, p. 2. 57 Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of

Charles I (New Haven and London: Yale

University Press, 1992), p. 654. 58 For the development of these stereotypes, see for example Alain Grosrichard, The Sultan’s Court: European Fantasies of the East, trans. by Liz Heron (London: Verso, 1998).

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she doubts his mortality (II.ii.446). Greek and later Western culture associated femininity and tyranny, with both woman and tyrant serving as ‘figure[s] of artifice and desire’.59 Cratander despises the misplaced femininity of Persian luxuriousness, but he pays more attention to the actual women of the court than do their menfolk, serving as their protector and advocate later in the play. Indeed, the play portrays a central role for women at court, the importance of treating courtly ladies—and especially the queen—with respect, and the value of their advice. At the beginning of the play, the role of courtly women seems negligible; by the end, following the intervention of Cratander, they have earned respect and powers of negotiation. One apparent failing of the Persian state is to ignore women as advisers or leaders. A discussion in Act 1 Scene 3 shows attitudes to women in power: O Madam! Your Sexe is too imperious to Rule; You are too busy, and too stirring, to Be put in Action; your Curiosity Would doe as much harm in a Kingdome, as A monkey in a Glasse-shop; move and remove, Till you had broken all. (I.iii.241–5)

Later in the play, the Queen’s ladies are the victims of an attempted attack by the Ephesian captives (II.iv), and are rescued by Cratander. Queen Atossa and Cratander then strike up a Platonic friendship of mutual admiration (III.iv), which leads Arsamnes to false suspicion of their relationship, though he is reassured by his wife (III.v). Atossa discovers and informs the women of the court that the Ephesians intend ‘a Rape upon/Your Honour, and your Wealth’ (IV.i.1061–2), but advises that to seek the protection of their husbands would be to ‘procure a slaughter on both sides’ (IV.i.1063). In consequence, the women vote to flee to a castle, which becomes their fortress, to which none but Cratander is admitted, and it becomes apparent that Atossa means to sue Arsamnes for the Ephesian slave’s life (V.i). Cratander recognises the virtue of their actions in protecting themselves, and proclaims his own readiness for death (V.i.1258–62, 1283–4).

59 Bushnell, Tragedies of Tyrants, p. 21.

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Arsamnes and his lords, however, suspicious of Atossa’s intentions, storm the castle gates when she refuses to give Cratander up (V.ii). Atossa declines to open the gates until her conditions are met, causing her husband to exclaim in disbelief, ‘Must we be Articled with by our women?’ (V.iii.1340). The ladies inform the king that it is Cratander who has protected their honour, and that of the court; without him, the kingdom and the Persian race would have been in danger: ‘Slaves had defil’d our Husbands beds, and we/Brought forth a Race of unlike Children, to/Blemish your Realme, and us’ (V.iii.1372–4). Arsamnes agrees to spare Cratander’s life, and to a further request from Atossa, that the Ephesians should ‘Still freely use their antient Customes, changing/Neither their Rites nor Lawes’, though living under Persian rule (V.iii.1425–6). The queen persuades her husband that not to agree would be to act tyrannically (V.iii.1431). In giving way to her desire, Arsamnes claims that he had already intended to grant such license, but the victory is nonetheless Atossa’s: the women’s conditions have all been met. They then descend from the castle, and Arsamnes and Atossa are reconciled. This episode is an example of how the Persian court, and specifically the king, are obliged to undergo a process of education, both by the women themselves, and through the example given by Cratander, who recognises the women’s worth and protects their honour and that of the court. The question of the role of women at court, and the benefits of paying attention to royal women, clearly has its resonances for the Caroline court of the 1630s; the weight given to this issue might in part explain the play’s popularity with Henrietta, who was significantly involved with contemporary drama.60 During this period, she was also developing a stronger position at court; as Sharpe has noted, ‘for most of the early 1630 s, the king’s script for personal rule did not assign his queen a leading part in the drama of politics and government’, but she began to ‘assert herself more and establish an independent influence’ as the decade progressed.61 The drama of this period with which Henrietta was involved may, in consequence, be seen to be ‘pleading for a greater role 60 For Henrietta Maria’s engagement with plays and masques in the 1630s, see Erica Veevers, Images of Love and Religion: Queen Henrietta Maria and Court Entertainments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Karen Britland, Drama at the Courts of Queen Henrietta Maria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 61 Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I , p. 173, p. 172.

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for the highest woman of the realm’.62 The queen’s influence over the king was a concern, particularly during the period of 1635–1636, which saw the arrival of a papal envoy to her court, several ‘court conversions’ to Catholicism, and growing fears about the concessions Charles would be prepared to make in favour of a reunion with the Catholic church.63 At such a time, a playwright might seek to appeal to the queen’s interests and influence, and to gain preference by suggesting that her interests and the king’s might be aligned. Henrietta not only reportedly enjoyed Cartwright’s play, but took an active role in ensuring its integration into court life. At the performance of The Royall Slave arranged for her own players, a song was contributed by one of her circle, Aurelian Townshend, who was to supersede Jonson as the court’s masque writer; this was a play in which Henrietta was strongly interested and which appealed to her fashions.64 Erica Veevers has documented the ways in which other plays influenced by the queen’s fashions asserted the rights and dignity of women, defending them against the powers and abuses of men.65 Henrietta’s role in the drama of the period was thus to some degree a political one, and it is unsurprising that a playwright such as Cartwright should seek to appeal to her in his portrayal of a wise and useful queen, who advises her husband and protects the nation. Another such form of appeal to Henrietta’s concerns may be observed in the play’s presentation of a Platonic love between Atossa and Cratander. Henrietta’s interest in Platonic love is widely noted and it has been argued that she encouraged ‘a Platonic drama […] of a type in which Platonic love was interpreted as Christian charity and was strongly linked with Divine Providence’.66 This is certainly the case in The Royall Slave, in which Atossa functions directly in accordance with the workings of providence in seeking to save Cratander’s life. Cartwright’s development of the Persian queen Atossa and her influence on the court at Sardis thus speaks directly to the interests of the French queen at Charles’ own court.

62 Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I , p. 173. 63 Caroline M. Hibberd, Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill: University of North

Carolina Press, 1983), pp. 39–50. 64 Britland, Drama at the Courts of Queen Henrietta Maria, p. 164. 65 Veevers, Images of Love and Religion, p. 4. 66 Veevers, Images of Love and Religion, p. 3.

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Persia’s usefulness as the background for the action is further exemplified by a closer examination of the tradition of sacrificing the slave who has served as king for three days, which dominates the play: ‘’tis the custome of the Persian Kings after a Conquest, to take one of the captives, and adorne him with all the Robes of Majesty, giving him all Priviledges for three full dayes, that hee may doe what hee will, and then be certainly led to death’ (I.i.70–75). As W. G. Rice noted in 1930, Cartwright may well have come across this practice in his reading of classical history. Rice cites an account given by Dio Chrysostom, in which Alexander is informed of this Persian custom by Diogenes: they take one of their prisoners [...] who has been condemned to death, set him upon the king’s throne, give him the royal apparel, and permit him to give orders, to drink and carouse, and to dally with the royal concubines during those days, and no one prevents him doing anything he pleases. But after that they strip and scourge him and then hang him.67

In fact, a reading of this passage does more than establish Chrysostom as a source for the events of the play. In the Fourth Discourse on Kingship, from which this extract is taken, Diogenes gives an interpretation of this custom which clearly places it within the tradition of advice to princes, as the practice is intended to serve as warning and counsel to those who would rule. For one thing, it shows ‘that foolish and wicked men frequently acquire this royal power and title and then after a season of wanton insolence come to a most shameful and wretched end’. The reasonable man, Diogenes argues, would rather stay in chains than be put to death after so short a reign. The message, therefore, is not to ‘attempt to be king before you have attained to wisdom’.68 This particular Persian practice then, as presented by Chrysostom, can explicitly be read in the context of direct advice about kingship, and it may well have resonated as such for Cartwright’s audience, and reinforced the play’s message about the importance of wisdom and learning for a king.

67 Dio Chrysostom, ‘The Fourth Discourse on Kingship’, in Dio Chrysostom, trans. by J. W. Cohoon (London: Heinemann, 1932), vol. 1, p. 199. Rice notes that Cartwright may have known Dio Chrysostom via editions published at Paris in 1604 and 1623. See Rice, ‘The Sources of William Cartwright’s The Royall Slave’. 68 Dio Chrysostom, ‘The Fourth Discourse on Kingship’, pp. 199–201.

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Alongside this example from classical history, a more recent instance of this Persian practice may also have come to Cartwright’s attention. A similar event took place at Abb¯as I’s court in the early 1590s and may well have been reported in London by those who had travelled to Persia. In the version of this custom that took place in this instance, astrologers had predicted the death of a royal personage, probably in Persia, and advised the shah to put another in his place for the dangerous period.69 Abb¯as placed on the throne a member of a minor sect, whom he personally adorned, and crowned, and who ruled for three days before being publicly put to death.70 For Abb¯as the convention of sacrificing the three-day king was a symbol of power and control at the expense of an individual and his sect, but in the play this event is transformed into a demonstration of strength by the slave, who proves a worthy king and is ultimately saved. Thus in both the example from Dio Chrysostom and the more contemporary anecdote from Abb¯as’ court, the custom of the three-day king can be interpreted as a warning or an example regarding the practices of good kingship. In the play, however, this custom is reportedly intended for the amusement of the king, rather than for any social good, as the comic jailer Molops emphasises ‘Be not mistaken:’tis not any way to honor you, but to make himselfe sport’ (I.i.69–70). Later, the king himself admits that Cratander’s brief rule was indeed intended for the purpose of ‘sport and mirth’ (V.vii.1600). In his first conversation with Arsamnes, Cratander argues that the deserving victor in a battle is one who ‘in/A pious way of gratitude returne[s]/Some of the spoyle to Heav’n in Sacrifice’, as victory is owed to Heaven (I.ii.132–4), and that the best of the spoils should form this sacrifice. Arsamnes points out that he has put forward an argument for his own death, given that the Persians sacrifice a slave after battle, but Cratander sees such a sacrifice as misguided: ‘I could/Tell you, the Gods […] doe not hunger after/Your cookery of sacrifice’ (I.ii.152–5). Although Cratander refers to ‘the Gods’ here, this speech is typical of

69 The fullest contemporary account is in Eskandar Beg Monshi, History of Shah ‘Abb¯ as the Great, trans. by Roger M. Savory, 2 vols (Boulder CO: Westview, 1978), vol. 2, pp. 648–9. I have been unable to find references to this incident in contemporary European travel writing, however. 70 For further information on this occurrence and the Nuqtavi sect, see Kathryn Babayan, Mystics, Monarchs, and Messiahs: Cultural Landscapes of Early Modern Iran (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 3–6.

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his approach, which serves to highlight the misguided attitudes of those around him.

Conclusion: Detaching from Contemporary Persia Kaufman’s reading of plays of Persia in the Caroline period registers a shift between earlier texts, such as The Royall Slave and William Davenant and Inigo Jones’s masque, The Temple of Love (1634), and later material, such as Mirza and The Sophy, which will be the subject of the next chapter. While the later drama ‘engages with Shah Abb¯as’ court directly, calling upon Herbert’s travel narrative as its primary source’, in the earlier texts, she argues, the renewed interest in Persian-themed dramatic entertainments manifests first in works displaying a self-conscious detachment from contemporary Persia and an ahistorical idealization of its mythic and mystic past.71

It is exactly this detachment from contemporary Persia and idealisation of its past that we have seen in The Royall Slave. Cartwright’s use of Persia as an open space in which to present and negotiate kingship, in which a ruler may be misguided or in need of education, but not openly tyrannical, may well draw on some contemporary travel accounts which represent Persia as a beneficent state, open to trade and traffic with Europe; Matthee suggests that Persia developed a reputation as ‘a land of refined, alert, and curious people ruled by a philosopher-king, a font of knowledge and spiritual wisdom.’72 But, as we saw in a brief reading of John Cartwright and Thomas Herbert, contemporary travel writing was to become increasingly negative or mixed in its portrayal of Abb¯as and his governance of Persia. This ambiguous status made Persia a useful location for playwrights interested in exploring ideas of governance, and Achaemenid Persia was especially useful, in that it benefited from both a physical and temporal distance from contemporary England. Kaufman suggests that William Cartwright’s lack of engagement with contemporary Persia might in part be due to the fact that his play was written and performed when ‘Herbert’s account of the failed Dodmore embassy, Some Years Travel (1634, 1638, 1664, 1665, 1677)’ was barely 71 Kaufman, ‘The Hospitable Globe’, p. 132. 72 Matthee, ‘The Safavids under Western Eyes’, p. 164.

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circulating. This is doubtless the case, but a reading of the ambiguities surrounding Abb¯as both in Herbert, and in The Preacher’s Travels, suggests that Cartwright may have purposefully ignored the contemporary Safavid context due to the negative or ambiguous representation of Abb¯as in even the earlier accounts. In Cartwright’s play, despite the availability of information about contemporary Persia in travel writing such as The Preachers Travels and the earlier edition of Some Travels, real or historical features of Persia play little part; it is more productive for Cartwright to construct a vaguely classical Persia, with some authentic detail (such as the sun-worship), rather than to set his play in contemporary Persia, where he would have to negotiate the more ambiguous context of the Safavids rather than the idealised past of the Achaemenids. Nonetheless, some ambiguity about Persian rule abides: what would have happened to Persia under Arsamnes’ rule without the beneficial guidance and counsel of Cratander? If Cartwright turned away from Safavid Persia in his play, both Robert Baron and John Denham, the subjects of the next chapter, chose to engage directly with contemporary Persia, and more fully to negotiate its complex ambiguities.

CHAPTER 7

‘[R]eally Acted in Persia’: Counsel, Regicide and Restoration in John Denham, the Sophy (1642) and Robert Baron, Mirza (1655)

Introduction: Persia and the Divine Right of Kings Chapters 2 and 3 discussed Persia’s role in sixteenth-century English explorations of political authority via the well-known Persian belief in the divinity of kingship. Interest and confidence in the divine right of kings was not, of course, to end with Elizabeth; James VI & I also believed that kingship ‘is the true paterne of Divinitie’ and that he ruled directly by the will of God, and the notion of the divine sanction of royal authority remained central to political discourse long into the seventeenth century.1 Scholarly debate about the uses of the divine right of kings during this 1 James VI & I, The True Lawe of Free Monarchies (1603), B2v. On the divine right of kings in the Stuart period, see Johann P. Sommerville, Royalists and Patriots: Politics and Ideology in England, 1603–1640, second edition (London and New York: Longman, 1986; repr. Harlow: Pearson, 1999); David Wootton, ed., Divine Right and Democracy: An Anthology of Political Writing in Stuart England (London: Penguin, 1986); Johann P. Sommerville, ‘James I and the Divine Right of Kings: English Politics and Continental Theory’, in The Mental World of the Jacobean Court, ed. by Linda Levy Peck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 55–70; Conrad Russell, ‘Divine Rights in the Early Seventeenth Century’, in Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England: Essays Presented to G. E. Aylmer, ed. by John Morrill, Paul Slack, and Daniel Woolf (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 101–20; Glenn Burgess, Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution (New Haven

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Houston, Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699, New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22618-2_7

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period has proliferated in the past four decades, with historians divided over the extent to which the belief in a divinely ordained monarchy accorded with the theory of royal absolutism.2 The theory of the divine right of kings which developed under James was ‘upheld and popularized by his son by different means, such as official prayers, printed proclamations and declarations, poetry, and, to some extent, court theatre and art’.3 Printed sermons from the period of Charles I’s personal rule, for example, developed the notion of the divinity of royal authority to establish ‘the idea of a king as an intercessor between God and the people, with a special stress on the God-likeness of the monarch, his almost direct connection with, and responsibility only before, the Lord’.4 Elena Kiryanova quotes Henry Valentine, the preacher at St Dunstan-in-theWest whose Accession Day sermon was published in 1639, and for whom ‘A king is Imago Dei, the bright image of God, and the most magnificent and conspicuous representation of the divine majesty; and we joy

and London: Yale University Press, 1996); J. H. Burns, The True Law of Kingship: Concepts of Monarchy in Early Modern Scotland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Johann P. Sommerville, Royalists and Patriots: Politics and Ideology in England 1603-1640, second edition (London: Routledge, 1999; repr. 2014); Bernard Bourdin, ‘James VI and I: divine right, the doctrine of the two kingdoms and the legitimising of royal power’, in The Struggle for the Succession in Late Elizabethan England: Politics, Polemics and Cultural Representations, ed. by Jean-Christophe Mayer (Montpellier: Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, 2004), pp. 119–41; Donald Alan Orr, ‘“God’s hangman”: James VI, the divine right of kings, and the Devil’, Reformation & Renaissance Review, 18.2 (2016), 137–54. 2 Johann P. Sommerville has suggested that the theory of the divine sanction of kingship emerged in response to the development of various resistance theories in the later the sixteenth century and that it was widely used by English clerics in order to defend the established church and monarchy and to win royal preferment; Sommerville, Royalists and Patriots, Chapter 1. Glenn Burgess has noted that before the civil wars years the divine right of kings was ‘less an attempt to define the full extent of the king’s sovereign powers—his supposed royal “absolutism”—than “a theory of obligation concerned primarily with the need to demonstrate to both rulers and subjects their duties before God”; Orr, 137, quoting Burgess, Absolute Monarchy, p. 94. Conrad Russell has further dismissed the direct equation of divine-right monarchy and the theory of royal absolutism; Conrad Russell, The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 147. 3 Elena Kiryanova, ‘Images of Kingship: Charles I, Accession Sermons, and the Theory of Divine Right’, History: The Journal of the Historical Association, 100 (2015), 21–39 (24). 4 Kiryanova, ‘Images of Kingship’, 24.

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in the pictures of our friends, when we cannot behold their persons.’5 The notion of the king as God’s ordained representative on earth thus continued to play a central role in political discourse regarding the relationship between God and monarch, monarch and people, in the later part of Charles’ reign. During this period, as Amin Momeni has noted, portrayals of Islamic Persia and Persians became a progressively more visible and more important element of English drama, as playwrights dramatised events involving real, historical figures who would likely be known to audiences from contemporary travel accounts.6 Anglo-Persian political parallels in texts such as John Denham’s The Sophy and Robert Baron’s Mirza, Momeni has argued, suggested similarities between aspects of Persian and English royalty.7 Clearly, Persia’s renowned adherence to the divine right of kings made it a useful point of reference in the arguments that took place regarding the taking up of arms against the king and debating the origins of power towards the end of Charles’ personal rule and in the civil wars years. The royalist David Owen’s Anti-Paraeus, or a Treaty in Defence of the Royall Rights of Kings was printed in 1642, on the eve of the civil wars, offering ‘a timely reminder of the obedience to magistrates and monarchs required of their subjects.’8 Paraeus, Glenn Burgess notes, was one of the main European sources for resistance theory used by early seventeenth-century English writers.9 Owen’s speech against Paraeus had originally been given in 1619 and published in Latin in 1622; its 1642 printing repositioned it as an intervention in the debates regarding royal power then taking place. Owen uses the example of the Persian Artabanus, who served Xerxes I as advisor and chief official, to show that according respect for the king as the representative of God on earth exists by a kind of instinct that preceded even early Christian teaching:

5 Kiryanova, ‘Images of Kingship’, 24. 6 Amin Momeni, ‘John Denham’s The Sophy and Anglo-Persian Political Parallels’, in

Sir John Denham (1615/15–1669) Reassessed, ed. by Philip Major (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 75–87 (p. 75). 7 Momeni, ‘John Denham’s The Sophy and Anglo-Persian Political Parallels’, p. 85. 8 Elizabeth Sauer, ‘Milton’s Defences and the Principle of the “Sanior Pars” ’, in The

Oxford Handbook of Literature and the English Revolution, ed. by Laura Lunger Knoppers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 445–61 (p. 449). 9 Burgess, Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution, p. 10, fn. 30.

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Artabanus also Vice-Roy of Persia (not without a Jeere, deriding the lightnesse of the Graecians) mocked Themistocles: You Grecians (saith he) care for nothing more than Liberty and Equallity; but we Persians do think it most excellent, and most sacred of all things, to give Honour and Reverence to the King, as to the Image of the living God; who rules and governs this whole World. What Artabanus delivered by the instinct of Nature, Augustine and others of the Ancients delivered by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, whose sayings, produced in their place will have the more Weight.10

For Owen, the Persian example of Artabanus provides pre-Christian authority and convenient evidence for the reverence of a king as ‘the image of the living God’. In the May of the same year, the House of Parliament resolved that the king’s recent actions constituted ‘a breach of the trust reposed in him by his people’, and that this justified a resort to defensive arms.11 In the various discourses on the king’s actions and their consequences which took place over the spring and summer, the question of where power resided became a major point of contention. Henry Parker, for example, maintained that political authority ‘is originally inherent in the people’; if it is held by anyone else, that is the result of a pact or contract which the people have assigned that person ‘by common consent’.12 Parker developed this line of argument to suggest that it is legitimate for Parliament to take up arms against the king. His Observations upon some of his Majesties late Answers and Expresses prompted William Ball to write A Caveat for Subjects in reply, in which Ball sought to clarify the question of whether political power comes from divine or popular authority. In doing so, he drew on Persia as an example to demonstrate his argument that monarchical power derived from God and resided in the monarch, not the people. ‘Monarchies,’ he wrote, ‘where the people have been brought into subiection either by the sword’, as in Persia, ‘or by innate, and prescribing, and prevalent authority’, as in Florence, or both, as in France and Castile, are dominions in which ‘power is not inherent in the 10 David Owen, Anti-Paraeus, or a Treaty in Defence of the Royall Rights of Kings

(1642), p. 70 11 Quentin Skinner, ‘John Milton and the Politics of Slavery’, in Milton and the Terms of Liberty, ed. by Graham Parry and Joad Raymond (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002), p. 10, quoting Cobbett and Hansard, eds, Parliamentary History, p. 1439. 12 Henry Parker, Observations upon some of his Majesties late Answers and Expresses (1642), p. 5.

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people, but in the Prince’. These included England, where, although the king is less ‘limited then others’, yet is their power derived immediately from God, and inherent in themselves, not in the people: for those limitations are (in conquered Nations) but mere donatives of grace proceeding from the Prince or his successors to the people, touching certaine immunities and priviledges; so that the Prince his power is the efficient cause of them, and such immunities or priviledges are but as materiall effects.13

Ball, in fact, argued not only that God intended that ‘some should bee masters and others servants’, but even that ‘some should become slaves to tyrants’; those who are called to ‘servility’ should endure without complaint.14 Perhaps it is natural that in support of such arguments, Ball turned to Persia, as an example of a monarchy where the people may seem to be under the yoke of tyrannical force, but nonetheless maintain the divine origin of that force and thus its necessary influence in their governance. Although it is unsurprising to find Persia providing examples to support a Royalist, monarchical argument, it is perhaps more unexpected to find it being used to support the other side, though some instances of such usage can be found. Stephen Marshall’s writings of 1642 and 1643 promoted the idea that it is not only right but requisite to cast off the yoke of iniquity rather than endure an evil ruler; in Meroz Cursed, he told the Commons they were ‘called to bee Leaders and Captaines of the Lords Host’.15 In A plea for defensive armes, printed the following year, Marshall argued that there may be situations where the innocent need to be protected against the prince, like Christians living under Persian rule: The Christians living under the Persian King, and wronged by him, sought for help from the Romane Emperour Theodosius, and were assisted by him; and when the King of Persia complained that Theodosius should meddle in affairs of his Kingdome, Theodosius answered, that he did not only protect them because they were suppliants, but was ready to defend them, and no 13 William Ball, A caveat for subjects (1642), p. 3. 14 Ball, A caveat for subjects, p. 12. 15 Stephen Marshall, Meroz Cursed (1642), p. 4; Robert Zaller, ‘Breaking the Vessels: The Desacralization of Monarchy in Early Modern England’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 29.3 (1998), 757–78 (766).

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way to see them suffer for Religion, it being the same with their own. It seems they thought it as lawfull to help an innocent people against the oppressions of their own Prince, as for one neighbour to succour another against theeves and robbers.16

On both sides of the argument, Persia served as an example of an absolute monarchy, either to demonstrate the idea that power comes from divine rather than popular authority, or to show the necessity of supporting good people against an oppressive king. Such references to Persia drew on the growing awareness of Persia as a current and powerful empire in the seventeenth-century world, although, as we have seen above, they typically refer to instances from classical Persian history, rather than the Safavid empire. It seems that when Persia was referred to in passing in seventeenth-century political discourse, it was most often classical Persia that came to mind, just as classical Persia, as we have seen, was frequently still present for travel writers in their descriptions of contemporary Persia and its people. This chapter will consider two plays which were influenced by such travel literature, melding elements of classical and contemporary Persia in order to critique the role of an absolute monarch underpinned by a belief in the sanctity of kingship. Both John Denham’s The Sophy (1642) and Robert Baron’s Mirza (1655), which draw on Thomas Herbert’s account of the Cotton embassy referred to in the last chapter, undertake, as Matthew Birchwood says, ‘a familiar theatrical strategy: the staging of a narrative ostensibly concerned with events that are geographically distant in order to describe situations that are politically close to home’.17 Each play participates in a discourse on the role and functions of counsel in relation to monarchy, considering the same topic as Owen, Marshall and Ball when they drew on Persia to support their arguments: the origins of power and the relationship between a monarch and his people. In so doing, they engage with contemporary Persia via their use of travel writing as a source, but nonetheless fall back on classical Persia in their dramatic imagining of the Persian empire. The Sophy was first performed in late 1641 and printed in 1642; Mirza, as has recently been established by Birchwood, dates not from the late 1640s as has often been presumed, but from after Charles I’s death 16 Stephen Marshall, A plea for defensive armes (1643), pp. 20–21. 17 Birchwood, Staging Islam, p. 70.

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in 1649, and was printed in 1655.18 The plays relate the same story, drawn from Herbert’s travel narrative, concerning an attempt to depose ‘Abb¯as I as shah, in which his advisor Haly or Ally-Beg connives to make the king jealous of his son Mirza’s popularity and to convince him that the prince intends a rebellion. In consequence, Mirza is overcome by ‘Abb¯as, blinded and imprisoned. Desiring to take revenge on his father, Mirza decides to kill his father’s favourite, his own daughter Fatyma. In Denham’s version of the story, the king and his son are reconciled before being killed by Haly and Mirza’s threat to murder Fatima is not carried out. In Baron’s version, Mirza strangles his daughter and then commits suicide; the conspiracy is discovered and the king convinced of Mirza’s innocence, but too late. In both plays, Mirza’s son Soffy or Soffie is made heir to the throne at the end of the play, becoming ‘the Empire’s hope’ for the future.19 Both plays, ‘suffused with metaphors of performance and authorship’,20 use Herbert’s account of the narrative of betrayal between father and son to interrogate themes particularly relevant to their own age, including martyrdom, regicide and the restoration of a true monarchy, with Mirza often figuring as Charles I. Obviously, questions relating to the maintenance of political power and the problems of succession were of particular significance in the 1640s and 1650s. But the main topic that the plays are interested in is not so much the transmission of power as the potential for its manipulation; the plays’ preoccupation with the role and function of counsel in governance can be seen within the specific political context of the 1640s and 1650s as well as an engagement with the tradition of plays of Persia. Persia provided not only examples of absolute kings, but also some specific conditions which made it relevant to the English political context: the issue of royal favouritism, for example, was one which had become an established complaint in English political discourse prior to the 1640s. In turning to Persia, Baron and Denham both meld aspects of contemporary and classical Persia in creating their stage Persias, perhaps because they are drawn to the classical heritage of pre-Islamic Persia. However, they also use classical Persia because of the other convenient associations that it held, for example, regarding effeminacy and tyranny, yoking these long-held ideas

18 Birchwood, Staging Islam, p. 78. 19 Birchwood, Staging Islam, p. 78. 20 Birchwood, Staging Islam, p. 79.

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to contemporary knowledge about Abb¯as’s treatment of his son. Maintaining and developing these ‘Persian’ qualities enables the creation of a perceived continuity between ancient and contemporary Persia, which sits alongside a ‘golden age’ image of an idealised Persia which may be brought back to life through the right actions. Although both texts bear a close relationship to their shared source material, their use of Persia is to imaginatively recreate it rather than to reflect the Persian empire as they found in contemporary materials. The Sophy In August of 1642 John Denham, then aged twenty-seven and having recently been called to the bar, issued two works anonymously. The first of these was the poem Cooper’s Hill, in which ‘the prospect from a Thamesside viewpoint at Egham is made the occasion for historical and moral reflections on kingship at a critical juncture in English history’.21 The second work, The Sophy, which was to be Denham’s only play, was entered into the Stationer’s Register on 6 August 1642, and published that year. There is no evidence that the play appeared at court; its title page states that it was first performed by the King’s Men, and it is possible that these first performances took place in late 1641 or early 1642.22 The Sophy, too, offers historical and moral reflection on kingship at this critical juncture in British history.23 During the last months of 1641 and the first few months of 1642, England was gradually preparing itself for conflict. The Irish Rebellion had begun in October 1641, as Irish Catholics who sought self-governance captured various towns and forts in Ulster and attempted to capture Dublin Castle; news of this rebellion reached London on 1 November.24 Popular news reports emphasised the

21 W. H. Kelliher, ‘Denham, Sir John (1614/15–1669), poet and courtier’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref: odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-7481?rskey=8vkoF2&res ult=1 [Accessed 8 March 2022]. 22 Loloi, Introduction, xxvi. 23 Matthew Birchwood notes that the play is ‘steeped in the controversies of the early

1640s [including the Irish Rebellion] and acutely aware of its own political currency’; Birchwood, Staging Islam, p. 71. 24 Ethan Shagan, ‘Constructing Discord: Ideology, Propaganda, and English Responses to the Irish Rebellion of 1641’, Journal of British Studies, 36.1 (1997), 7–34 (7).

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physical threat the Rebellion posed to the English, often based on wholly or partially fabricated sources. Ethan Shagan’s article on English responses to the Rebellion quotes from one pamphlet which described what had taken place at Armagh, stating that both English and Scottish men had been murdered by rebels: in a most cruell and bloudy manner, with their wives and children: first deflowring many of the women, then cruelly murdering them, and pulling them about the street by the haire of the head, and dashing their children’s brains out against the posts and stones in the street, and tossing their children upon their pikes, and so running with them from place to place, saying that those were the pigs of the English sowes.25

Some pamphlets represented the ‘atrocities’ of the Rebellion as ‘the deliberate acts of a Catholic enemy whose aim is the total annihilation of Protestantism’, drawing on well-worn links between Catholicism and graphic violence. Shagan, however, has argued that these interpretations of the Rebellion constituted more than just anti-Catholic vitriol: it was portrayed as another chapter in the narrative of Christ versus Antichrist, an example of persecution and martyrdom, and an example of how God tests His followers but then rescues them at the eleventh hour or when they come to sit by His side.26

Alongside such responses were those which saw ‘disloyalty, rebellion, and social anarchy as a more serious threat than popery’;27 these emphasised the need for loyalty and obedience to the monarch. English responses to the Irish Rebellion thus articulated a fear of threat to England, which was at least in part understood as a question regarding how and when a populace should obey the king. Dozens of Popish plots were reported in the English press between November 1641 and April 1642, and anxiety that the Irish rebels would move to invade England was expressed openly in Parliament and throughout the country; it was widely reported that English Catholic rebels would join forces with Irish

25 Shagan, ‘Constructing Discord’, 7, quoting Bloudy Newes from Ireland, or the Barbarous Crueltie by the Papists Used in that Kingdome (1641), sig. A3. 26 Shagan, ‘Constructing Discord’, 15. 27 Shagan, ‘Constructing Discord’, 17.

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Catholics in order to support such an invasion.28 To read The Sophy as a play which was created and performed against this backdrop of political uncertainty, during which questions of obedience to the king and the legitimacy of resistance were of paramount importance, directs our attention to how these ideas are manifested in the text. John Denham might reasonably have been expected to have been more attentive than most to the Irish Rebellion, given that he was likely born in Dublin and his maternal grandfather was the first Viscount Drogheda, his father having served as the chief justice of the king’s bench in Ireland.29 The association between Denham’s play and the Rebellion was also noted at the time of its reception; Edmund Waller famously remarked of The Sophy that Denham ‘broke-out like the Irish Rebellion — threescore thousand strong before anybody was aware’.30 The prospect of rebellion and the threat of political and social disorder was of course intensified through the growing movement towards the outbreak of the English Civil Wars in August 1642. Here, again, the relationship between monarch and people was obviously of central importance. The ‘eleven years’ tyranny’ of Charles’ personal rule from 1629 to 1641 demonstrated his preference for rule by personal prerogative and what some scholars have seen as a tendency towards the absolutism which was developing at France at this time.31 From March 1642, both Charles and Parliament were gradually arming for war. In June, Charles rejected the propositions put to him by Parliament with the intention of restricting his royal prerogative. These propositions articulated the belief that Charles was victim to ‘evil counsellors’, who should be replaced by advisors whom Parliament and the people could trust; in responding to this request, Charles appealed that he ‘knew of no ill counsellors’ still in his service and that allegations to the contrary would ‘deter any that he trusts in public affairs from giving him free counsel’.32 The role of counsel in moderating the king’s position and maintaining liberty for his people 28 Keith Lindley, ‘The Impact of the 1641 Rebellion upon England and Wales, 1641-5’, Irish Historical. Studies, 18 (1972), 143–76 (154). 29 Kelliher ‘Denham, Sir John (1614/15–1669), poet and courtier’. 30 Kelliher, ‘Denham, Sir John (1614/15–1669), poet and courtier’. 31 Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I , xv. 32 Richard Cust, Charles I and the Aristocracy, 1625–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2013), p. 242.

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was a central topic of public discourse at this time. Having rejected Parliament’s propositions, in July Charles failed in his attempt to capture Hull and settled in Nottingham, close to Royalist areas in the Midlands and northern Wales. On 22 August, Charles formally declared war on Parliamentarian ‘rebels’, raising his standard against them at Nottingham.33 Both sides expected a single battle and quick victory; for the Royalists, this meant capturing London, for Parliament, success in ‘rescuing’ the king from his ‘evil counsellors.’34 Denham himself seems to have spent the months leading up to the outbreak of war in a state of indecision about what his own position would be. In her edition of The Sophy, Parvin Loloi notes that ‘Denham was in favour of even-handedness’, finally declaring for king’s side by the summer of 1642.35 Denham would go on to be appointed governor of Farnham Castle; after the castle was captured in December 1642, Denham was briefly imprisoned in London, then released in spring 1643, when he joined the king in Oxford. Despite his royalist affiliation after 1642, at the time of the play’s writing, Denham was in a period of vacillation regarding the direction he would take. The play would thus seem to have been written at a pivotal point in Denham’s own decision-making, as well as at a pivotal point in English politics; it seems impossible to ignore the context of the impending conflict, and specifically the role of ‘evil counsellors’ in Parliament’s complaints, in understanding The Sophy. The early 1640s were also an important period in the relationship between England and Persia, and consequently in English perceptions of Persia, which underwent a shift during the 1630s. By the onset of the first civil war in 1642, English trade with the East had declined.36 The English silk buying in the 1630s fared very badly; as price of raw silk dropped, the East India Company ceased its Persian trade.37 The 33 Michael J. Braddick, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 247. 34 Anonymous, The History of the Commons Warre of England Throughout these Nations (London, 1662), p. 13. 35 Loloi, Introduction, xxiv. 36 See Edmund M. Herzig, ‘The Volume of Iranian Raw Silk Exports in the Safavid

Period,’ Iranian Studies 25. 1/2 (1992), 61–79 (63–65, 68, 70, 74). 37 Matthee, The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran, p. 135; Ben Coates, The Impact of the English Civil War on the Economy of London, 1642–50 (London: Routledge, 2017), p. 10.

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complexities of trading in Iran and the competition posed by the Dutch also impeded English efforts at trade as, despite the EIC’s best efforts, ‘English kersies and woolens sold poorly and cheaper Bengali silk replaced the Persian variety’.38 Travel writings about Persia from this period do not display the optimistic tone common to those associated with the Sherley brothers in the early years of the century. The prospect of Persia as a nation potentially open to English Christian friendship and influence was no longer dominant. Instead, travellers offered ‘a new image of Persia as an exotic land of untrustworthy people and vile practices, a place that had little to recommend it’, and English travel writings about Persia no longer proliferated, with English travellers relying on the narratives of other nations for information, such as those of the French, Germans and Dutch.39 Denham’s play, then, was first produced at a time when the domestic political situation was unstable, and public discourse dominated by questions of the king’s relationship with his people and his vulnerability to poor counsel, while Persia was developing a reputation as not so open and accommodating to the English as might previously have been thought. Accounts such as Herbert’s thus continued to provide useful information for English audiences interested in Persia. Herbert’s narrative pulled no punches in identifying the Persian shah’s failings as a monarch. Though he recognised Abb¯as’s courage and military strength, calling him a king ‘with whom few things were impossible’, he also emphasised his perceived cruelty and bloody-mindedness, ‘bloudy Abb¯ as King of Persia’ being one of his titles for the shah.40 When Herbert does notice the king behaving with ‘clemencie’, he informs the reader that this is ‘a vertue very rare in this old Abb¯ as ’.41 Persia thus formed an ideal setting for Denham’s exploration of absolutist kingship, and the problems and difficulties inherent in counselling a king. These are ideas which are introduced from the opening lines of the play, as Morat and Abdall, identified on the list of dramatis personae as ‘Lords, friends to the Prince’, debate

38 Steven Lynn Smith, ‘A Friend or a Foe: Popular Perceptions of Persia in England, 1598–1688’ (PhD thesis, University of California Santa Barbara, 2010), p. 297. 39 Smith, ‘A Friend or a Foe’, p. 296. 40 Herbert, A relation of some yeares travaile, p. 88, p. 69. 41 Herbert, A relation of some yeares travaile, p. 80.

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whether to pass on some bad news to him.42 Abdall reveals that the Ottoman force outnumbers the Persians by around ninety thousand men, a military advantage that is likely to have ‘a fatall consequence’ not only for the king but for all those who live in his empire, for if this battle were to be lost, ‘the naked Empire / Would be a prey expos’d to all Invaders’ (p. 1). The men agree on the severity of the situation, but Morat advises against informing the king, because ‘To tell him of so great a danger, / Were but to draw a greater on our selves’, as he is suffering from a ‘lethargie’ which ‘Has seiz’d his powers towards publike cares and dangers’ (p. 2). The best people to advise the ruler of this danger are thought to be the Caliph and Haly, the king’s favourite, but they cannot be relied upon to perform the proper function of counsellors, because of their inclination to flatter the king: ‘they shew him nothing / But in the glasse of flatterie’, deliberately distorting the monarch’s vision: if any thing \May beare a shew of glory, fame, or greatnesse, ‘Tis multiplyed to an immense quantitie, And stretch’t even to Divinitie: But if it tend to danger, or dishonour, They turne about the Perspective, and shew it So little, at such distance, so like nothing, That he can scarce discerne it (p. 2).

In consequence, any knowledge that comes to the king is already coloured by the individual who passes it on, ‘And still beares a relish / Of Flatterie, or private ends’ (p. 1). The scene ends with the Lords’ conviction that the king’s advisors speak to their own interest, encouraging the king to believe that he is safe, and thus their verified and important information regarding the size of the Turks’ army is redundant to help with king. As the play progresses, problems with counsel continue to dominate the plot, with Haly deliberately misadvising the king for his own purposes. As he does so, the counsellor makes a point of performing brusque honesty. When he tells the king that the people favour his son Mirza, the king’s response shows his shock at what seems like a tactless and unexpected truth from his counsellor: 42 John Denham, The Sophy (1642), A2v.

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Thou hast forgot thy selfe: art thou a Courtier, Or I a King? my eares are unacquainted With such bold truthes; especially from thee (p. 13).

Haly in response claims that he must speak ‘boldly and plainly’, even though he is seeking to manipulate the king to his own ends. Haly’s false counsel to the king, combined with the impossibility of the king’s hearing true and useful information, dramatises the problems inherent in a system where counsel is the only means of influencing the power of an absolute monarch, and where honesty and plainness are more often performed than truly exhibited. The situation is later satirised by Solyman, ‘a foolish Courtier’ (A2v), as he faces the punishment of torture. Before he is racked, Solyman begins to repent his sins: ‘first I repent that sinne of being a Courtier. / And secondly, the greatest sinne one can commit in that place, the speaking of truth’ (p. 29). These sins are taken seriously as such by his ‘Tormentors’, while his other sins, ‘Drinking, and whoring, and swearing, and such like’ are ‘Some few trifles more, not worth the remembering’. Solyman goes on to advise that to be a ‘State foole’ is to be ‘fooling on the right side’, because such a foole ‘shall at least be / Wise mens fellowes, if not wise mens masters’ (p. 29). ‘But of all things,’ he advises: take heed of giving any man good counsell, You see what I have got by it; and yet like a foole, must I be doing on’t againe (p. 29).

Solyman proceeds to get drunk before leaving the stage to face the rack. Both through the main plot of the king’s deception by Haly, and the subplot involving Solyman’s punishment, the play contributes to a discourse on the difficulties of relying on counsel as a means of controlling royal power. The threat of the ‘evil counsellor’, dramatised in Haly, heightens the vulnerability of the king. Indeed, Denham’s interpretation of his source material seems to emphasise this vulnerability and to shift the responsibility for failures in the system from the king to the (evil) counsellors. As Loloi points out, the Abb¯as in Herbert’s narrative seems ‘largely in control of his own actions’. He is jealous and suspicious of his son, but this seems to come largely from his own mind; Herbert refers in passing to ‘irritations of some Cabinet Counsellors (enemies to

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the Prince)’, but does not elaborate further.43 In consequence, in ‘The Sophy, Abb¯as is an altogether more vulnerable figure, easily manipulated by Haly’, and even he himself ‘comes to the recognition that he has been the victim of his own “deceiv’d credulitie” (v.i.149)’.44 Denham’s version of the Abb¯as-Mirza narrative, then, accords with that of a man who has no personal dislike of the king, but misgivings about a political situation which does not defend him against the malevolent designs of those who would manipulate him to their own ends. The imagery of blindness, in which the play abounds, suggests that the king’s faults may be ones of omission rather than deliberate fault. Although, as others have pointed out, it is impossible to sustain a reading of the play which views Abb¯as as a straightforward version of Charles I, it is nonetheless convincing to read the play as a meditation on the relationship between king and counsel, which is rather forgiving to the role played by the king when that dynamic is perceived to be failing.45 Mirza Fifteen years Denham’s junior, Robert Baron also began his literary career in the civil wars years, publishing his first literary endeavour, Erotopaignion, or, The Cyprian Academy, in the spring of 1647 (at the age of 17) and dedicating it to James Howell, the writer and historian who was at the time imprisoned in the Fleet prison. Baron’s biographer has described Howell as an ‘ardent royalist’;46 if so, then Baron’s politics may have been more closely aligned with those of Howell (who, though apparently no blood relative, addressed Baron as ‘my dear Nephew’ in his letter of thanks for the book), than with his own father, 43 Loloi, Introduction, xlviii, quoting Herbert, p. 100. 44 Loloi, Introduction, xlix. 45 Loloi, Introduction, lxiv: ‘Only the most violent anti-royalist could take seriously

Denham’s Abb¯as as an image of Charles I’. Birchwood and Martin Butler note that the play’s representation of the Caliph, in particular, may represent public opinion on Archbishop Laud, who was viewed as a conduit by which means Catholics were able to influence the king, and who was imprisoned for treason in the Tower by the end of 1641. Birchwood, Staging Islam, p. 73; Butler, Theatre and Crisis, p. 80. 46 David Kathman, ‘Baron, Robert (bap. 1630, d. 1658), poet and playwright’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford University Press https://www.oxforddnb.com/ search?q=‘Baron%2C+Robert+%28bap.+1630%2C+d.+1658%29%2C+poet+and+playwrigh t’%2C+&searchBtn=Search&isQuickSearch=true [Accessed 21 March 2022].

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also Robert Baron, who was a strong parliamentarian. On the eve of the civil war, Howell had been appointed clerk to the Privy Council; he was, however, unable to take up the position due to being arrested by officers of the Parliament, and imprisoned in the Fleet until 1651. By the time Baron was thinking of a dedicatee for Mirza, his last work before his premature death in 1658, which was printed in 1655 and entered in the Stationers’ register on 16 August of that year, he looked higher than Howell. The play’s dedication ‘TO HIS MAJESTIE’ has led a number of scholars, as Birchwood comments, to presume that its intended recipient was Charles I and that the play must logically pre-date Charles’ death in 1648.47 But, again as Birchwood points out, the references in the play’s annotations to ‘our late King Charles’, not to mention the external evidence of the Stationers’ register, point to 1655 as the correct date of the play.48 The ‘Majestie’ of the dedication is thus Charles Stuart II, then living in princely fashion in exile on the continent, even if his royal title was ‘aspiration rather than actuality’ at that point in time.49 Whether it has been read as a product of the late 1640s or the early-tomid 1650s, Mirza has inevitably been understood within a highly political context. Indeed, the Abb¯as-Mirza story as dramatised in Baron’s play has been read as an opportunity for the playwright to represent in Mirza a figure for Charles I; Randall has suggested that ‘probably Baron was genuinely fired’ by the relevance of ‘the story of the tyrant and his son’ ‘to his own time’, reading Mirza as ‘a reasonable Charles figure’.50 As Birchwood has argued, however, the play offers ‘a more problematic and ambivalent critique of royalist ideology’ than has often been presumed.51 Both the direct historical context of the play, and its form as a closet drama, are relevant to its presentation of the Persian empire. In Birchwood’s words, ‘[t]o stage an episode in Persian history in 1641 (John 47 Birchwood, Staging Islam, p. 77. Momeni reads the dedication as being to Charles I in ‘John Denham’s The Sophy and Anglo-Persian Political Parallels’, p. 87. 48 Birchwood, Staging Islam, p. 77. 49 Anna Keay, ‘“The Shadow of a King?” Aspects of the Exile of King Charles II’ in

Monarchy and Exile: The Politics of Legitimacy from Marie de Médicis to Wilhelm II , ed. by Philip Mansel and Torsten Riotte (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 105–19 (p. 105). 50 Dale B. J. Randall, Winter Fruit: English Drama 1642–1660 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995), p. 134, p. 67. 51 Birchwood, Staging Islam, p. 75.

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Denham’s The Sophy) means something radically different from scripting the same episode in printed dialogue in 1655 (Robert Baron’s Mirza)’.52 The play’s status as closet drama encourages its interpretation as a contribution to political discourse, intended for a readership rather than a dramatic audience, as does its bulky paratextual material. The dedicatory letter, for example, informs Charles that the play intends not only to delight, but to ‘profit YOU ’, by showing a king who is brought down by ‘The Flatterer, and too powerfull Favourite’.53 One of the prefatory poems to the play, by the poet John Quarles, addressing ‘Great Mirza’, suggests that it will be no difficulty for the audience to apply the Persian tale to an English context; Quarles assures the prince that ‘whilst you tell./Your Tale, wee’l easily find a Parallell’.54 The play’s portrayal of the influence of a favourite, and the failings of the king’s advisers to control him, form a central part of its critique of royalist ideology, and specifically the notion that a king can be adequately influenced by his counsellors. In Herbert’s account of his travels, on which Baron draws heavily and which he calls his ‘Authority’, the narrative first establishes Abb¯as as a tyrant through relating a series of tyrannical acts on his part (some of which were probably factually inaccurate), stating that Abb¯as initially fears to act against Mirza in case his men rise up against his tyranny.55 In Baron’s play, Haly, the evil counsellor figure, has a much greater role; Mirza shows the vulnerability of a king to poor or malicious counsel, rather than the vulnerability of a king to monstrous tyranny. In this way, both Mirza and The Sophy meditate on the problem of the consequences of an absolute king whose actions are not tempered by adequate counsel, in which the subsequent failing is not his alone; it is the duty of both a king and his people to be alert to the dangers of poor counsel. While The Sophy dramatises the relationship between king and counsel to explore its nature, Mirza is entirely preoccupied with the subject of counsel, its role in governance and its potential to go wrong. The play considers the necessity of good counsel, its merits within the monarchy, the importance of being ‘advis’d’, and the relationship between the giving

52 Birchwood, Staging Islam, p. 12. 53 Robert Baron, Mirza a tragedie, really acted in Persia, in the last age: illustrated

with historicall annotations (1647), A2r. 54 Baron, Mirza, A3v. 55 Loloi, Mirza, vx–xviii.

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and receiving of counsel and friendship. It also explores the dangers of bad counsel, especially through flattery, and the risk that ‘evill Counsell’ poses to both king and state. In doing so it demonstrates an ambivalence about Persia which reflects the shift in English perceptions of Persia during the period: on the one hand Persia possesses a rich heritage and past golden age which might perhaps be brought back to life in the modern age; on the other, its tyrannical system of governance leaves it vulnerable to malefactors and the risks inherent in a flawed system of counsel. The importance of counsel and the benefits of good counsel are focused in the play on the character of Mirza, the prince, who avows the importance of counsel in politics and war. Mirza is frequently associated with friendship, insisting on the fellowship that he feels for his soldiers and his readiness to fight alongside them, so that the bravest soldier in his army, ‘Did never hear me saying yet, go thee / Where slaughter highest rag’d, but follow me’ (p. 25). Though prepared to lead, Mirza is prepared to share his glory with others: if said soldier proved a better fighter on the field, ‘I’d yield my Palme to him’ (p. 25). Mirza also takes advice in planning his strategy; in preparation for war, he recognises that the role of counsel in battle, as in governance, is to temper force: ‘Counsell must direct each martiall feat; / Uncounsel’d force is crush’d with its own weight’ (p. 26). Mirza’s attitude to counsel contrasts with that of his father Abb¯as, who will not take advice. In Act Three, Abb¯as states his disappointment that his men are inclined to discuss and ‘debate’ his strategy, rather than treat his commands as orders: ‘Heavens! how far / Was this state Gangreen crept, that they durst make / Debates of my so positive commands!’ (p. 43). When Abb¯as’ favourite, Mahomet, asks his fellow courtier Farraban, ‘Which is the way to rise at Court’?, Farraban’s response is simple: ‘T’obey and please’ (p. 47). To obey and please the king is perceived by the courtiers to be the road to success for the ‘ambitious’ man; Mahomet contrasts Mirza’s tendency to appease the people rather than his king and father, which he views as unsuitable behaviour for a leader: The multitude He [Mirza] stroaks with Popularity, and they Like true dogs fawn, and crouch as much to him. […] He courts the common souldiers by their names, Lies with them on the Guard, fares as they fare, And calls them all his fellows, sees them serv’d,

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In time of want, ere he himself will take The least refreshment (p. 8).

Abb¯as’ contrasting disinclination to attend to advice leaves a vacuum, in which counsel, rather than disappearing altogether, takes place without the king’s participation, and ‘evil counsellors’ consequently gain more power than they should have. When the king’s enemies are plotting against him, they refer to their secret meetings as ‘our […] Councell’ (p. 81); as this council takes place without the king, it promotes insurrection and develops resistance to his rule. As well as being dramatised and discussed in the action of the play, the subject of counsel is debated openly by the Chorus, who often consider questions relating to how counsel should properly function. At the end of Act One, for example, the Chorus consider the distinction between flattery and good counsel: And whilst that Kings will, in things high, Their action to good counsell tie. And not by single advise be led, Oth’ passionate unsalted head. But since that flattery and ease Crept into Princes Palaces, ’Tis dangerous to be good, or great, For such the Court’s a slippery seat (p. 23).

In this analysis, counsel plays a vital role in maintaining good governance within the monarchy; without it, the ‘best Government Monarchy’ will ‘Degenerate into Tyranny’, and so the ‘Flatterer’ who would bypass the collective authority of the counsel to develop an individual and influential relationship with the king is a barrier to effective rule. At the end of Act Two, the Chorus explored further the dangers of bad counsel: What dire effects evill Counsell works Even to unhinging greatest states! It doth allure with specious baits, But underneath foul Poison lurkes. The Prince, to please a factious few Must rob himself even of his best Of friends, and discontent the rest, Which he may ever after rue (pp. 40–1) […]

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How hard and difficult a thing, Almost above the power of man, Or even what the immortalls can, Is it, to be a prudent King! (p. 41)

In order to benefit from genuine advice, the Chorus states that it must be widely known that the king ‘loves the naked truth to hear’ from a limited number of people, because ‘if these freedomes given are / To all, they to contempt will grow’ (p. 41). The ‘wise Prince’ selects ‘some few’ to whom he ‘gives libertie / To tell him all things as they be’, making sure that those men he chooses are ‘wise and daring, that above / His Fortune do his Person love’ (p. 41); in this way the king may avoid flattery. The Chorus thus advocates the creation and maintenance of an effective group such as the Privy Council, whom the king should give the ‘libertie’ to speak freely. Such statements on the role of counsel in governance demonstrate the extent to which the play is a meditation on political counsel. Indeed, Mirza’s meditation on counsel can be understood as part of a broader contemporary political discourse which reserved the right to complain about the weaknesses and failings of individual counsellors, and also to criticise monarchs for what were perceived as poor decisions. Mirza, in common with the qualities that Jacqueline Rose has identified in such writings, calls for curbs on monarchy which are moral rather than institutional, in keeping with Rose’s sense that during this period counsel, containing elements of friendship and sociability as well as of political activity, was more significant than institutional councils.56 It is exactly this form of counsel that is dramatised in the networks of friendship and advice-giving shown in Baron’s play, which explores the problems inherent with counsel but insists on its generic importance even when formal or institutional councils are not present. The play’s exploration and critique of counsel forms an important part of its ‘more problematic and ambivalent critique of royalist ideology’, as identified by Birchwood in his analysis of the text.57

56 Rose, ‘Sir Edward Hyde and the Problem of Counsel in Mid-Seventeenth Century Royalist Thought’. 57 Birchwood, Staging Islam in England, p. 75.

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Conclusion The year 1644 saw the publication of a tract entitled Lex, Rex by the Scottish Presbyterian minister Samuel Rutherford. Amongst other arguments in support of the Presbyterian ideal in politics, Rutherford’s text put forward a robust defence of the rule of law and an attack on absolutism, advocating limited government; Lex, Rex would see Rutherford accused of high treason following the Restoration, and would become, in 1683, one of the last books officially to be burned in England.58 The king’s prerogative, Rutherford argued, should not be permitted to ‘over-leap Law and Reason’; he suggested that Charles, due to his ‘Prerogative Royall’, had been able to control the service book in Scotland and promote Catholicism. If a king is allowed full license in this manner, Rutherford asks, further degeneration may follow: ‘if you make the King a Iulian (God avert, and give the spirit of revelation to our King) may he not command all the Alcaron, and the Religion of the Heathen and Indians?’ A royalist, he says, might argue that it is the role of counsel to influence a king who holds a royal prerogative: ‘he is to follow the advice and counsell of his wise counsell, though their counsell and advice doth not binde the Royall will of the King’. However, counsellors are liable to tell a king what he wants to hear, ‘what may please the King whom they make glad with their lies, not what law and reason dictateth’. And even absolute monarchs may have counsellors who do not advise them well but can actually prevent them from undertaking good actions; as an example, Rutherford cites ‘the Kings of Babylon, and Persia’; and in the Bible, Daniel says that they have power of life and death over their subjects, and yet ‘these same Kings did nothing, but by advice of their Princes and Counsellors’, and so would not deliver Daniel, once ‘the Law was passed, that he should be cast into the Lions den…’. Persia serves for Rutherford as an example of a state which has both the disadvantages of an absolute monarchy, and of a form of governance which is hampered by the risk of evil counsellors, who both flatter the king and prevent him from acting morally when he might be inclined to do so 59 It

58 Derek Jones, ed., Censorship: A World Encyclopedia (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 255. 59 Samuel Rutherford, Lex, rex. The law and the prince: a dispute for the just prerogative of king and people (1644), p. 197.

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is these associations of Persian governance, also portrayed in travel writings like Herbert’s Relation, which Denham and Baron’s plays draw on in construct imaginary Persias in which the problematic nature of counsel can be explored in the context of the royal prerogative. The fact that the role of counsel as manifested in the Mirza story only intensified its 1650s iteration supports Jacqueline Rose’s argument that counsel remained a crucial element of English royalist thought after 1642. Rose has contended that. the civil wars years of the mid-seventeenth century brought to the fore a number of pressing issues surrounding the politics of counsel. In the English theatre of that conflict, counsel provided a useful tool by which parliament first criticised the policies of the 1630s Personal Rule, then levered itself into position as the dominant element within the mixed constitution, and ultimately claimed sovereignty.60

In comparison to the pre-civil wars years, ‘the period after 1642 has seen minimal historiographical attention to counsel’, based on the presumption that ‘the 1640s and 1650s were the point where counsel vanished, temporarily or permanently, from political life’. In questioning this presumption, Rose has shown that counsel continued to play an important part in English royalist arguments in the 1640s and 1650s. Plays such as The Sophy and Mirza show that counsel also remained dynamic in the dramatic imagination during this period; Rutherford’s critique of the role of counsel in absolute kingship is a reminder of the important part that counsel played—or was supposed to play—in controlling a king who believed that he ruled by divine right. In their different ways, both plays express a deeply held scepticism about the capacity of counsellors to control a king, against a Persian setting where the divide between monarch and tyrant is none too apparent.

60 Jacqueline Rose, ‘Sir Edward Hyde and the Problem of Counsel in Mid-Seventeenth Century Royalist Thought’, in The Politics of Counsel in England and Scotland, 1286– 1707 , ed. by Jacqueline Rose (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 249.

CHAPTER 8

To ‘Dispose of Crowns’: Conversion, the Authority of Monarchy and the Issue of Succession: Elkanah Settle’s Cambyses (1667)

Introduction: Cambyses ’ Dedication In the dedicatory letter to Anne, Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, which preceded the first printed edition of Cambyses, King of Persia, in 1671, Elkanah Settle depicted his subject, ‘the Eastern Monarch Cambyses’, as having ‘by your [Anne’s] power become a Convert’.1 As a Persian king, Cambyses possesses an illustrious past: Once Persia was the Mistress of the Earth, the Royal Seat of the Monarchs of the Universe. Then, as that God, the Sun, which they ador’d, lends his kind Rays to all lesser lights; so all the Tributary Glories of Inferiour Princes shin’d by reflection from the Persian Crown. (A2v)

With this great power dimmed, Cambyses ‘can pretend to no greatness of his own’, and must ‘borrow Glories from the Western World, in seeking a Patronage from your favourable goodness’ (A2v). As befits his status as a convert, Cambyses ‘humbly payes his Devotion to that 1 Elkanah Settle, Cambyses, King of Persia a tragedy (1671), A2v. All future references will be to this edition and will be given in parentheses in the text.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Houston, Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699, New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22618-2_8

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Divinity, to whose protection he commit himself and Fortune’ (A2v). Having once been renowned as a ‘Blasphemer of the gods, a Prophaner of Religion, and a Defacer of Temples’ (A2v), Cambyses is—somewhat magically, and certainly unhistorically—converted in faith and in manners. Via the dedication of Settle’s play, Cambyses now submits to the ‘true’ God and comes humbly to seek patronage, somewhat incongruously, from a sixteen-year-old Scottish duchess. Little is known about Elkanah Settle prior to the performance and publication of Cambyses. Born in Dunstable on 1 February 1648, the eldest son of a barber who later became an inn-keeper, Settle’s education was supported by his uncle, and in 1663 he was a king’s scholar at Westminster School. In 1666, shortly after leaving Westminster and entering Trinity College, Oxford, Settle wrote Cambyses, a heroic tragedy. The play was accepted by D’Avenant’s company, then performing at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and was the first play which that company put on after the Great Fire, being performed in December of that year.2 At one level the choice of Anne Scott, the wife of James, first Duke of Monmouth, as the dedicatee for Settle’s play about the downfall of a Persian king seems unexpected. If Settle was seeking patronage himself, then surely Anne Hyde, the Duchess of York and wife of James, brother to Charles II, would have been a more obvious choice: James, after all, was the patron of D’Avenant’s players, the Duke’s Company, who had performed Cambyses. If the dedication to Anne Scott seems like a misstep, this might perhaps be explained by Settle’s own youth: Cambyses was written when Settle was eighteen years old, and it was his first play to be performed or printed.3 By the time the play was published, Settle had experienced rather more success: it was a commercial triumph, running ‘six days with a full audience’, and was probably the reason for Settle’s early departure from Oxford for London, where he enjoyed a period of popularity and

2 The fullest biography of Elkanah Settle remains that authored by Frank C. Brown, Elkanah Settle: His Life and Works (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1910); the biographical information given in this paragraph is drawn from pp. 6–9. See also Abigail Williams, “Settle, Elkanah (1648–1724)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/25128 [Accessed 9 August 2022]. 3 Brown, Elkanah Settle: His Life and Works, p. 9.

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favour at court.4 But the choice of the Duchess of Monmouth as dedicatee, and potential patron, is perhaps less surprising and more strategic than might first appear. James Croft, later James Scott, had been created the first Duke of Monmouth at the age of thirteen, when he had been brought to England from his home in the Netherlands on the orders of Charles II, shortly before he married Anne, a Scottish heiress, becoming the first Duke of Buccleuch on his wedding day. James was the eldest illegitimate son of Charles II, born in 1649 by his mistress Lucy Walter while Charles was in exile, and was thus natural nephew to James, Duke of York, who would eventually succeed Charles as king.5 In 1666 Monmouth was the captain of a troop of cavalry, having served in the Anglo-Dutch war under his uncle’s command, and seemed to have a bright future ahead of him. He would later become known as the ‘Protestant Prince’, a potential contender for the throne; James had been brought up a Protestant, the pupil of Thomas Ross, and his Protestantism made him a popular alternative to his Catholic uncle.6 Although the Duke of York’s conversion to Catholicism did not take place until 1668 or 1669, and was kept secret until 1672, his interest in Catholicism was already known by the late 1660s.7 The Duke of Monmouth, who would later go on to lead the Monmouth Rebellion, an attempt to wrest power from James II for which he would be executed in 1685, was an attractive alternative prospect as a future king at this time, as ‘cracks in the royalist ideology were beginning to appear’, alongside concerns over Charles’ infidelities and his failure to father a legitimate heir.8 In the late 1660s, it looked quite possible that Charles would indeed name Monmouth as his heir.9 Anne Scott, in

4 Brown, Elkanah Settle: His Life and Works, pp. 9–10. 5 See Anna Keay, The Last Royal Rebel: The Life and Death of James, Duke of Monmouth

(London: Bloomsbury, 2016), Chapter 2. 6 Mark Grossman, World Military Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary (New York: Facts on File, 2007), p. 226. 7 See John Callow, The Making of King James II: The Formative Years of a King

(New York: Sutton, 2000), pp. 143–44; Emma Depledge, Shakespeare’s Rise to Cultural Prominence: Politics, Print and Alteration, 1642–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 109. 8 Depledge, Shakespeare’s Rise to Cultural Prominence, pp. 68–9. 9 Grossman, World Military Leaders, p. 226. In the mid-1660s it was rumoured, and

Monmouth himself certainly seems to have believed, that his Charles had married Lucy

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addition, was also becoming known as a patroness of the arts; Dryden would dedicate The Indian Emperour to her in 1667, when the play was first printed and revived after its first performance in 1665. Dryden later called the Duchess of Monmouth his ‘first and best patroness’; as well as being an enthusiastic theatre-goer, in 1668 she and her husband were amongst those who performed The Indian Emperour at court.10 Anne Scott, then, both by association with her husband and by virtue of her own Protestant faith, may have been seen by Settle as a reliably Protestant figure and likely patroness to whom to dedicate his play. It would have been uncomfortable, after all, to address a dedicatory letter discussing its non-Christian subject as a Christian convert to Anne Hyde, who was the centre of controversies concerning her Catholic sympathies, and was herself a religious convert, if a secret one.11 Settle, who would later go on to write anti-Catholic political pamphlets, was not likely to have sought the Duchess of York’s patronage.12 Within this context, the Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth emerges as a strategic choice of patroness: and far from being a likely convert herself, she may be presumed to welcome the prospect of a potential, if fictional, convert to Protestantism.

Walter in the Netherlands, making Monmouth’s birth legitimate. In February 1664, Pepys reported that Monmouth was threatening to kill anyone who denied his legitimacy. See Maurice Lee, Jr, The Heiresses of Buccleuch: Marriage, Money and Politics in SeventeenthCentury Brit ain (East Linton: Tuckhouse Press, 1996), p. 99. 10 Ian Jack, The Poet and His Audience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 8; Amy Scott-Douglass, ‘Aphra Behn’s Covent Garden Drollery: The First History of Women in Restoration Theatre’, in The Public’s Open to Us All: Essays on Women and Performance in Eighteenth-Century England, ed. by Laura Engel (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), pp. 98–127 (p. 111). On Anne’s enjoyment of the theatre, see Lee, The Heiresses of Buccleuch, p. 104. 11 Anne had in fact converted from Protestantism to Catholicism soon after her marriage to James in 1660, but this was not widely known until after her death. See Molly Murray, The Poetics Of Conversion in Early Modern English Literature: Verse and Change from Donne to Dryden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 145. 12 Such pamphlets include The Character of a Popish Successour, and What England may expect from such a One (1681). See Raymond D. Tumbleson, Catholicism in the English Protestant Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 130. J. Douglas Canfield calls another of Settle’s plays, The Female Prelate: Being the History of the Life and Death of Pope Joan (1680), ‘anti-Catholic propaganda’ in ‘Royalism’s Last Dramatic Stand: English Political Tragedy, 1679–89’, Studies in Philology 82 (1985), 234–63 (236).

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Conversion and Identity Conversion, as is plain from the intertwined lives of the Monmouths and the Yorks, was a complex and compelling subject in late seventeenthcentury England. A number of recent studies have established the status of the seventeenth century as a period of ‘intense conversion activity’, something of ‘a vexed issue in England’ post-Reformation.13 ‘Early modern thinking was framed by textual and lived conversion, whether past, present or future […] conversion was the mood of the moment’ and its language and motifs spread everywhere.14 As Molly Murray has argued, ‘conversion […] profoundly influenced the English literary imagination’, and continued to do so late into the seventeenth century.15 One reason for this was the uncertain religious status of both Charles and James, Duke of York, and growing concerns, even as early as the late 1660s, about Charles’ possible conversion and the risk of a Catholic king, either in the form of Charles himself, or via James as his possible heir. Charles remained within the Anglican Church until his deathbed conversion, but in the 1660s maintained a strong interest in Catholicism. Like his father, Charles had come to the throne with a Catholic queen,16 and seems to have considered leaving the Anglican Church altogether in 1669.17 Later it would be suggested that Charles did intend to convert, and that he had even promised to do so in the Secret Treaty of Dover (1670) in order to strengthen his potential alliance with Louis XIV. Although it has been argued that Charles’ ‘Catholicity’ was a temporary strategic move, it is certain that Charles’ religious position was to

13 Helen Wilcox, ‘“Return Unto Me!”: Literature and Conversion in Early Modern England’, in Paradigms, Poetics, and Politics of Conversion, ed. by Jan N. Bremmer, W. J. van Bekkum and A. L. Molendijk (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), pp. 85–106 (p. 86); Jane Hwang Degenhardt, Islamic Conversion and Christian Resistance on the Early Modern Stage (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), p. 6. 14 Wilcox, ‘“Return Unto Me!”’, p. 87. 15 Murray, The Poetics Of Conversion, p. 5. 16 Murray, The Poetics of Conversion, p. 20. 17 John Miller, Popery and Politics in England 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1973), Chapter 6. On the suggestion that Charles II intended to convert England to Catholicism, see J. R. Broome, Reformation and Counter-Reformation: 1588–1688 (Harpenden: Gospel Standard Trust Publications, 1988), p. 16; ‘a Roman Catholic breeze was blowing through the English court’: Maurice Ashley, England in the Seventeenth Century (3rd edition, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), p. 129.

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many, in Murray’s words, ‘disturbingly unfixed’.18 During Charles’ reign, as John Miller has argued, ‘Catholic conversion would return to its central position in the English national consciousness’; the anxiety about the king’s conversion drawing on popular fears of royal conversion had started almost a century before.19 Such concerns may have been founded on conversion as a change in the king’s—and the nation’s—religious identity, but the work of Michael Questier and others on the subject of conversion in the seventeenth century has demonstrated the degree to which it is drawn out of a ‘matrix of political and religious factors’.20 Discussions of religious conversion are rarely limited to religion alone; instead, the subject of religious conversion is entwined with conversion between other positions and forms of identity.21 Given that this was a period in which politics and religion were inextricably linked, change from one religious identity to another could thus connote change between different political stances. In English seventeenth-century drama, the topic of conversion was a frequent subject of plays set in Islamic countries.22 Conversion had long proved a useful means of examining religious and political controversy, which is not surprising given that this was a period of revolutionary political and religious change, and that English drama was quick to respond to the opportunities presented by such change. In general terms, English Restoration drama seems less preoccupied with religious conversion than had plays written in the earlier years of the seventeenth and the late sixteenth centuries.23 In the comic plays of the Restoration and early eighteenth century, for example, it was the conversion of morals which

18 Murray, The Poetics of Conversion, p. 20. 19 Murray, The Poetics of Conversion, p. 20. 20 Michael Questier, Conversion, politics and religion in England, 1580–1625 (New

York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 2. 21 See Chloë Houston, ‘“I wish to be none bother but as he”: Persia, masculinity and

conversion in early seventeenth-century travel writing and drama’, in Conversions: Gender and Religious Change in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Simon Ditchfield and Helen Smith (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), pp. 216–35. 22 See Birchwood, Staging Islam in England, pp. 96–98. 23 Restoration plays that involve religious conversion include John Dryden’s The

Conquest of Granada (1670/ 1672).

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more greatly interested dramatists.24 In a number of plays about Persia, however, religious conversion is referred to, if usually in passing rather than as a dominant element of the subject or plot. If religious conversion could stand in for other sorts of changes and shifts between identity, then in Restoration plays about Persia, it was a suggestive metaphor for the process and consequences of changing one set of habits—and identities—for another. This context helps us to read Cambyses’ supposed conversion in the dedicatory letter of Settle’s play as building an association between political agency and religious identity. The narrative of Cambyses centres around the usurpation of the Persian king, Cambyses; historically, Cambyses II, the son of Cyrus the Great, was a ‘king of kings’, renowned for conquering Egypt. In the play, Cambyses, his throne having been threatened by an impostor posing as his brother Smerdis, is murdered by Prexaspes, a former favourite who has betrayed him. The impostor Smerdis is in turn killed by Darius, and the play ends with the gift of the Persian crown by Otanes, its rightful heir, to Darius. The Darius of Cambyses is Darius I, who ruled the Achaemenid empire at its peak and was renowned for his empire-building and organisational success. The play interrogates the origins and ownership of monarchical power, and the lawfulness and implications of rebellion, debating the role of human and divine will in kingship and the legitimacy of tyranny. Cambyses’ conversion in the dedicatory epistle presents an image which might be expected to appeal to the English audience: the representative of a once-great empire acquiescing to the more impressive power of England, a comparatively new imperial player. The prospect of the conversion of an Eastern ruler was one which had a wider context in this period and which had been circulating in one form or another for many decades. Although the long-anticipated conversion of the Turk was by the mid-seventeenth century ‘a more rhetorical than realistic proposition’, there were during the 1650s and 1660s a number of active attempts at converting the Ottoman people and Sultan Mehmet IV to Christianity.25 There was, moreover, a long-held interest in the conversion specifically of Persia and its rulers, which is represented and explored in the drama and travel 24 See, for example, Aparna Gollapudi, Moral Reform in Comedy and Culture, 1696– 1747 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). 25 For these and other missionary efforts in the period, see Birchwood, Staging Islam, p. 34.

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writing of the earlier seventeenth century.26 Persia seems to have been a particularly exciting prospect for religious conversion in this period; in Cambyses, conversion provides a useful way into the dramatic exploration of political identity and the instability of power. In his opening speech, Cambyses, like Tamburlaine, presents himself as a god-like figure, whose military success has given him global power: The trembling World has shook at my Alarms; Asia and Africa have felt my Arms. My glorious Conquests too did farther flye; I taught th’ Egyptian god Mortality: By me great Apis fell; and now you see They are compell’d to change their gods for me. I have done deeds, where Heaven’s high pow’r was foyl’d, Piercing those Rocks where Thunder has been toyl’d. Now, like our Sun, when there remains no more, Thither return whence we set out before. (Br)

So great is Cambyses’ dominance that he has obliged the Egyptians undertake a mass conversion; ‘to change their gods for me’ leaves open the suggestion that Cambyses himself is made an object of worship. This assertion of Cambyses’ power makes his own supposed conversion and need to ‘borrow Glories from the Western World’, to which the dedicatory letter has referred, all the more impressive. In both of the conversions in which Cambyses plays a role, first as convert in the letter and then as converter in his self-presentation onstage, the process of conversion is understood as demonstrating the balance and exercising of global power; the nation or empire that is more powerful by necessity converts others to its practices or religion. Conversion is a loaded metaphor to employ, because conversion in the early modern period was itself an ambiguous and unstable process; a convert or renegade, having ‘turned’ once, might turn back to the original faith, and it was difficult to verify a convert or be certain of their ‘true’ identity.27 As already established, the interest in religious conversion and its relationship to political 26 See Chloë Houston, “Turning Persia: the prospect of conversion in Safavid Iran”, in The Turn of the Soul: Representations of Religious Conversion in Early Modern Art and Literature, ed. by L. Stelling, H. Hendrix, and T. Richardson (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 27 See for example Questier, Conversion, Politics and Religion in England; Miriam EliavFeldon, Renaissance Impostors and Proofs of Identity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,

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power and succession was real and important in the late 1660s, when Settle was writing Cambyses. Hence to begin the play with an image of political power as potentially vulnerable to conversion, like religious faith, describes a fundamental instability around political and monarchical power. The certainty of Cambyses’ conversion to Western ways, and his submission to Western power, as presented in the dedicatory letter, is destabilised by the ambiguity of conversion as a theatrical metaphor. The instability of different forms of identity, raised by the play’s attention to religious conversion, is explored throughout the play as a whole, and particularly through its interest in competing notions of how power is gained and transmitted. The narrative centres around the usurpation of the Persian king, Cambyses, by a man posing as his brother Smerdis, and the false-Smerdis’ own murder, which is followed by the gift of the crown by Otanes, its rightful heir, to Darius. The play thus interrogates the origins and ownership of monarchical power, and the legitimacy and implications of rebellion, in a manner that calls attention to its own recent political history. As Matthew Birchwood has noted, ‘Smerdis embodies the figure of the usurper in what would appear to be a fairly straightforward re-enactment of illegitimate ambition in the Cromwellian mode’.28 Smerdis is both usurper and impostor, having no legitimate claim to power. But the king whom Smerdis would overcome, Cambyses, is himself a flawed ruler, frequently called a tyrant.29 At any moment in the play, there is little prospect of the peaceful transmission of political power. In Persia, it seems, there are too many potential rulers, and no safe pair of hands until the transmission to Darius is guaranteed. Until his succession, Persia lacks stable rule; in the absence of stability, the play debates the origins of power and how it is held, putting forward a number of positions for examination, and focusing in particular on whether power is divinely or humanly ordained.

2012), p. 59; Brinda Charry, The Arden Guide to Renaissance Drama: An Introduction with Primary Sources (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), p. 90. 28 Birchwood, Staging Islam, p. 147. 29 For example, at the moment of his fatal stabbing: “Your Death, proud Tyrant—

Dye, Cambyses, Dye”, p. 54.

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Authority in Cambyses In the opening scene of the play, as Cambyses revels in his military successes in Syria and Egypt, trumpets and shouts are heard offstage, from a ‘Cloud of People’ surrounding the camp (B2r). The clamouring of the people is not for Cambyses but for Smerdis, the brother whom Cambyses had supposed to be dead. The Smerdis who is leading this insurrection may have no legitimate claim to the throne, but he is able to win power through political intrigue, promising the Syrian crown to the king’s close friend Prexaspes, who then stabs Cambyses. Smerdis’ achievement of political power is recognised as arising from his popular support; his general Theramnes compares Cambyses and Smerdis thus: ‘He Conquer’d Nations, you their hearts subdue’ (Cr). Patasithes, Smerdis’ friend, also argues that political power rests in the will or perception of the people: Kings and Beauty in this Title share, ’Tis the adorers eye makes Beauty fair. The Persians thus by their Allegiance show, You’re the true Prince, if they but think you so. (Cr). Smerdis (the impostor, now hailed as the ‘true Prince’) himself clearly sees his rule as divinely given: ‘The wills of Kings and Heav’n together meet’ (p. 16). And according to Smerdis, it is divine will which creates popular will and thus his support, and not the other way around: Poor Mortals thus may the Gods honour raise, By building Temples to exalt their praise. But ’tis the gods themselves that do afford Those Mortals breath, by which they are ador’d. (p. 61)

This is partially supported by the spirits who descend and sing in Act Five, with an unambiguous statement of support for the divine right of kings: Kings from the Gods, and from our Elements Derive their greatnes, and descents. Since they are sparks of Heav’n ’Tis just they have from us this Title giv’n, To share our Pow’r and God-heads too, As being Heav’ns Deputies of State below. (p. 74)

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It is Smerdis, Patasithes and their fellow rebels who most often debate the question of authority, its origins and transmission, contending that they are backed by both divine and human will: Patasithes:’Twas by Heaven’s pleasure, and our wills decreed, To place the Crown of Persia on your head. […]. You by a Nobler force have Empire gain’d, Wresting the Scepter from Cambyses hand. […]. Smerdis: The Fate of Crowns depends on common chance, Fortune and pow’r may to a Throne advance. But to confirm that Crown our pow’r affords, Requires our souls more active than our Swords. (B4v). The rebels frequently assert the divinity of kingship, but they sometimes distinguish this authority from that conveyed by popular support. The position of those who wish to undertake violent rebellion is that they can only maintain their power through that popular support, which initially brought them to Cambyses’ attention. Smerdis, though, sees himself as allied with the gods rather than subservient to them. Like Tamburlaine, he asserts his responsibility for his own fate: Let Heav’n whatever Fate for me design, ’Tis Smerdis must make Smerdis glory shine. My stars can but their utmost pow’rs dispense: But I’le Act things above their influence. (p. 14) […] We Monarchs to our selves our Fortunes owe: Our Agents Act but what we bribe ’em to. […] (p. 60)

Smerdis, then, believes himself to be a divinely ordained king, but to be capable of acting as he wishes, no matter what divine will may intend for him. His assertion of the supremacy of his power over that of divine fate is challenged in Act Five by the reminder of a spirit, who appears to him in the final scene of the play, that a king’s power is ephemeral and lasts only as long as it is divinely ordained: Kings from the Gods, and from our Elements Derive their greatnes, and descents. Since they are sparks of Heav’n

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’Tis just they have from us this Title giv’n, To share our Pow’r and God-heads too, As being Heav’ns Deputies of State below. (p. 75)

The impostor Smerdis denies such a qualification and in doing so resists the authority of both spirits and gods: Smerdis defies your gods, and you. I am above your threats; such empty things Borrow the form, but I the pow’r of Kings (p. 76)

In placing himself above the gods, Smerdis refuses to listen to moral advice. It is not until his dying moments that he recognises the power of divine authority over him: ‘This Fate Heav’n had in store, / That thus my Wounded Heart should bleed no more’ (p. 77). In 4.1, Prexaspes identifies Cambyses’ tyranny as the motive for his death (‘Your Death, proud Tyrant—Dye, Cambyses, Dye’, p. 54), but in condemning Smerdis and his immoral seizing of the crown, the play (unsurprisingly) rejects the seizing of power by might, no matter how tyrannical the king be. Despite this rejection of rebellious force, the play sees political power moving from one man to another through intrigue and violence, with no viable alternative and no truly worthy monarch. Until the crown is given away to Darius at the end of the play, kingly power can apparently only be achieved by violence; there is no other effective means of getting it. The would-be king’s belief that his success is divinely ordained is reasonable only as long as he understands his place within the hierarchy of authority. Here, as Birchwood has argued in relation to Phedima’s trial in Act Two, Scene Two, the play makes ‘a mockery of the notion of the sanctity of monarchy’.30 The play does, however, explore alternatives to violence as a means of transmitting power, and in particular, the possibility of gaining it through the female line or through marriage. Mandana is an Egyptian princess, heiress to the Egyptian throne, whom Cambyses has captured following his wars against her country. In the opening scene of the play, Cambyses describes her heart as his ‘Conquest left to win’ (p. 2), and encourages her to cease mourning and look favourably upon him. He wishes the princess to acknowledge him as both her parent and suitor: ‘Forget his Death, 30 Birchwood, Staging Islam, p. 148.

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and I’le your fare retrive, / Your King and Father both in me shall live’ (p. 2). Mandana, however, is in love with Osiris, a young prince also taken captive by Cambyses, and has contracted to marry him, although she breaks off her engagement with him in Act One, Scene Two, due to her change in circumstances. Formerly, Mandana states, to gain her love meant to gain a kingdom—‘I give an Empire where I give a heart’ (p. 6)—but due to her capture, she no longer represents the prospect of a crown. She resists Cambyses’ advances, decrying him as a murderer, ‘and, fairly typically, the amorous victor finds his advances checked by a bastion of chaste loyalty’ as ‘Settle recapitulates the familiar figures of conquering tyrant and disinherited feminine virtue’.31 When Cambyses fails to persuade Mandana to change her mind, he offers her a stark choice: either to marry him, or to be killed. Mandana initially appears to acquiesce, and Cambyses states that he will make her queen the following day, once they have consummated their marriage: ‘This to your Beauty’s due, / First, I will crown our Loves, and then crown you’ (p. 53). Mandana then states that her only wish is to be allowed to die, so that she can change an earthly empire for a heavenly one, where she will reign with Osiris (whom she by now believes to have been killed). Cambyses, angered, prepares to stab her: How, Captive, am I scorn’d, and scorn’d by you? To shew what injur’d Majesty can do, Your death to this dispute an end shall bring, I’le act no more your Lover, but your King. Your Beauty shall no more my Arm controul, I’le find a nobler passage to your soul. (p. 53)

Mandana refuses to let Cambyses commit murder and thus a crime, and draws a dagger to kill herself: ‘Rather then let a King that guilt contract, / Mandana her own murd’rers part will Act’ (p. 53). Before either of them can commit murder, however, Prexaspes enters, takes the dagger from Mandana’s hand, and uses it to kill Cambyses, calling him a tyrant. Mandana’s condemnation of this act is instant; addressing Cambyses, she remarks on the injustice of his death: ‘Though thou wert wicked, yet thou wert a King’ (p. 55). Prexaspes makes to stab her, too, but is prevented by the entrance of Otanes, Darius and Artaban, whom 31 Birchwood, Staging Islam, p. 147.

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he quickly convinces that it is Mandana who has killed Cambyses, not himself; Mandana is taken into custody to await her sentence of death. Mandana does not herself represent the gaining of political power in either Persia or Egypt: as she states, Cambyses has removed her capacity to ‘give an empire’ (p. 6). But due to the misunderstanding over her responsibility for Cambyses’ death, it is later believed that she is responsible for the crown passing to Otanes, and thus to Darius; in the words of Theramnes to Darius, ‘to her Hand you do your Scepter owe’ (p. 80). Even when he believes this to be true, however, Darius will not allow his sympathy for Mandana to influence his actions as a king: he insists that she must be put to death for the murder of Cambyses. It is only when Prexaspes confesses and kills himself that Darius removes Mandana’s death sentence, and restores her to her rightful place as monarch of Egypt, ‘Your self I to your Throne restore’ (p. 85). As it also transpires that Osiris is not dead but in disguise, Mandana is free to marry him, and to repeat the statement she made at the beginning of the play: ‘I give an Empire where I give a heart’ (p. 6). Osiris will thus rule Persia through his marriage to the woman he loves, and her rightful restoration to power. Just as Egypt’s future is secured through Mandana’s marriage, so the stability of Persia is also achieved through the marriage of Darius and Phedima. Once Darius has slain Smerdis the impostor, the throne passes to Otanes, who is its rightful heir. Otanes immediately states his wish that Darius should become a king, as he is better fitted to the role: My Age, and Youth, with different passions move, I am above the charms of Pow’r, or Love. My thoughts flye higher than t’ inherit Thrones: Not to wear Diadems, but dispose of Crowns. But since my Birth makes me an Empires Heir, Thus I accept the Crown,—to place it here. (p. 77)

Darius twice refuses this offer; the third time, Otanes bids him to ‘Take it as my Son’ (p. 78), giving his daughter Phedima to Darius in marriage; Phedima is in love with Darius, whose ‘merits, not my Love, have their excess’ (p. 10). Darius now accepts, signalling his intention to share his empire with his new wife:

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Love makes me take what Honour did excuse. In this you give more than a Crown, I dare Accept an Empire, to divide it here. [Bows to Phedima] (p. 78)

At the end of the play, Otanes reiterates to Darius that this marriage will constitute a union of the man best fitted to rule and the family to whom the throne belongs. The uniting of the two will create a stable ‘Race of Kings’, in the form of a secure dynasty: Though for your sake I do a Throne disdain, Yet my Posterity with yours shall Reign. [To Darius] And in your Heirs your blood shall mix with mine As divers Fountains in one Current joyn. This to my Fame the only glory brings, Not to wear Crowns, but have a Race of Kings. (p. 85)

In both cases, then, it is through marriage to a legitimate heir of the empire that a man gains political power, and in the case of Persia, the union is seen as the foundation of the subsequent empire’s success and stability. These equal unions are starkly contrasted to the relationships sought by the impostor Smerdis. In Act One, Scene Four, Smerdis sees Phedima and her sister Orinda at court, and is immediately attracted to Phedima. On seeing him, Phedima draws a veil over her face, but Smerdis forcibly removes it, seeing the use of the veil as a ‘coyness’ which ‘invited’ as much as it ‘threatened’ (p. 11). Phedima interprets this action as a grave slight: A Persian Ladies honour is profan’d, Who bears this usage from an unknown hand. What frenzy has possest your soul? (p. 11)

When Smerdis’ friend Patasithes ‘Thrusts her rudely to Smerdis ’, counselling him that ‘Love is a thing that’s sooner done, than told’, Phedima calls for divine help and describes the two men as ‘Ravishers’ (p. 12). She claims the sanctuary of the Persian court in her defence: You know you are within the Persian Court: Your Violence chose an improper stage: This sanctuary guards me from your rage. (p. 12)

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Patasithes urges Smerdis to use violence rather than persuasion with Phedima, likening the courting of women to the creation of justice, which kings must make through action: See with what courage she her cause protects; You but the King, but she the Tyrant Acts. […] ’Tis Kings make Justice, and not Justice Kings, And in that name you may Act greater things, And still be just. The Persian King’s design No Woman more than for a Concubine. And in that onely name she should not have The Courtship of a Mistress, but a Slave. You then should force her whom you could not move. (p. 13)

Smerdis, however, wishes to court Phedima more conventionally, calling Patasithes’ behaviour ‘inhumane’. When he next meets her, he calls himself Phedima’s slave, at which point she physically steps into his throne in order to ‘Act your Justice’: ‘since he Loves, I’le use a Mistress’s pow’r, / With all the rigour of a Conquerour’ (p. 19). When Smerdis offers her what he perceives to be a form of rule (in ruling him), Phedima refuses it as an incomplete power: Two lights together cannot equal shine, Mine will Eclipse your glory, or yours mine. And ’twould a lesser Honour be, to have A King my Equal, than a King my Slave. (p. 20)

Patasithes sees Smerdis’ approach to love as a dangerous one, which will make him vulnerable to political attack: ‘Love does debase all Courage, and he is, / Like tame Beasts, onely fit for Sacrifice’ (p. 20). In thrall to the woman whom he would make his mistress, Smerdis’ failure as a suitor reflects his illegitimacy as king; just as he allows his advisor to prompt him to greater violence in love, he permits his supporters to prompt him to unlawful violence in an effort to gain political power. As Matthew Birchwood has noted, chivalric behaviour elsewhere in the play also results in a paralysis of inaction: At the beginning of the second act, Theramnes, the play’s principal exponent of unswerving allegiance, finds himself in a double-bind of loyalty versus honour. Having gallantly undertaken to take revenge for an affront

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to Phedima, a Persian lady, Theramnes supplicates King Smerdis for help in unmasking the perpetrator, only to find that the king and ‘Offender’ are one and the same. In a parody of regicide, Smerdis directs Theramnes’ sword to his breast and urges him to fulfil his pledge. In this rendition, however, the loyal subject is paralysed by reverence—‘Though Vows are sacred, so are Monarchs too’ (2.1.46)—and instead of performing the ‘Champions part’, agrees to contrive a meeting between the impostor king and the object of his lustful advances.32

Mandana, like Phedima, tells Cambyses that love cannot be won through power: Your proffer’d Crowns cannot my thoughts controul, You have subdu’d my Empire, not my soul. [...] But know, proud King, my Virtue I’le secure: My Honour is above a Tyrant’s pow’r. (p. 27)

Like Smerdis’ forced unveiling of Phedima, this prompts Cambyses to ‘more manly’ action, in which manliness is associated with physical force: A fierce assault my drowsie soul does storm; And bids my Love wear a more manly form. My Reason now shall my blind passion guide; I’le be a Vassal to her Eyes, not Pride. Since then my mildness could not win a smile, I’le learn to court her in a rougher stile. (p. 27)

In Act Four, Scene One, too, he disdains the role of conventional lover for something more forceful: ‘I’le act no more your Lover, but your King. / Your Beauty shall no more my Arm controul’ (p. 53). Despite this avowal of action, and its implication of rape, Cambyses is ultimately powerless to compel Mandana who, as demonstrated above, would rather commit suicide than submit to him. Both Cambyses the tyrant-king and Smerdis the impostor are unable to order their sexual and marital affairs as they wish. Their lack of control over women is perceived as denoting a more general lack of political control, and as signalling in both cases their unfitness to rule. Even if Charles II’s sexual behaviour was not directly similar to that of Smerdis or Cambyses, this dramatisation of a 32 Birchwood, Staging Islam, pp. 147–8.

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lack of sexual control as signalling a lack of political fitness can be read within the context of complaints, even as early as the mid-1660s, about the king’s sexual conduct. The relationship between the king’s sexuality and his monarchical identity described by Harold Weber is dramatised in Cambyses, where sexual and political control are closely related.33 Darius, the eventual ruler of Persia who gains the throne peacefully, is directly contrasted to Cambyses and Smerdis in both his approach to political power and his treatment of women. For example, we might compare Darius’ attitude to Mandana, which is one of pity. When Darius expresses his reluctance to see Mandana put to death for Cambyses’ murder, his priest cautions him that ‘you do forget that Crown you wear’. Darius replies: ’Tis true, I do: And Scepters sacred are. Act you my part: whilst I avert my eyes; My pity shall pay homage when she dyes, And since she suffers for my Empire’s sake, A Monarch’s tears Part of that Royal Sacrifice shall make. (pp. 82-3)

Darius’ attitude to his future wife, Phedima, similarly, is one of reverence, as he expresses in the closing speech of the play: And this my onely glory I must own, Adopted to your blood, and to a Throne. [To Phedima] All that I am, your Beauty rais’d me to: I to a Crown aspire to merit you. (p. 86)

What does this have to tell us about how the play presents the gaining and transmission of political power? Darius’ successful accession to the throne, and thus the foundation of his remarkable empire, is apparently founded on romantic love rather than personal ambition: ‘Thus to a Throne no common wayes I move, / Others rise by Ambition, I by Love’ (p. 86). Birchwood has argued that the play:

33 Harold Weber, ‘Carolinean Sexuality’, in Cultural Readings of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Theater, ed. by J. Douglas Canfield and Deborah C. Payne (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), p. 71.

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betrays deep misgivings concerning the legitimacy of succession. Amidst these anarchic plot reversals both true and usurping kings are killed, Cambyses by his scheming parasite, and Smerdis by a company of Persian noblemen who after several false starts finally discover his imposture.34

In the end, stability is achieved when the crown is passed peacefully to a man who does not have a direct blood claim to the throne, but is to marry into the family that does, and who will thus father heirs to the throne who are legitimate successors in both senses. Cambyses and Smerdis, a failed partnership of brothers, represent ‘the moral failings of [the] ruling elite’, to which Persia is shown to be vulnerable.35 The genuine capacity for good kingship, reflected in the proper treatment of women and successful personal relationships, is shown to be the most important factor in securing a suitable heir.

Conclusion With the Restoration came not only the return of the Stuart monarchy, but also the rewriting of recent events, at least in terms of constitutional law. The period from 1649 to 1660 may have constituted a hiatus during which England apparently had no king, but at the Restoration, ‘the constitutional rendering of the Interregnum was in the nature of a denial that an interregnum had ever existed’.36 Charles II was to be considered as having been king in the eyes of the law from 30 January 1649, even if it had taken eleven years before he was able to take possession of his throne. The new king was deemed to have been ‘an “absolute” monarch, i.e., a complete and perfect king, from the moment of his father’s death’, even during his period of absence. The succession from Charles I to Charles II, in reality a process fraught with violence, was reconfigured as a more peaceful and natural transmission of power: English law did not permit an alternative.37 In 1660, the principle of constitutional legitimacy, i.e., that the next in blood should be entitled to succeed to the throne, had been followed in 34 Birchwood, Staging Islam, p. 148. 35 Birchwood, Staging Islam, p. 149. 36 Howard Nenner, The Right to be King: The Succession to the Crown of England,

1603–1714 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), p. 111. 37 Nenner, The Right to be King, p. 111.

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the accession of Charles II. It had been expected, especially following his marriage to Catherine of Braganza in 1662, that Charles would soon fulfil his constitutional obligations and father legitimate children who would succeed him to the throne. Almost immediately, however, when an heir did not appear in the first years of the marriage, there began to be speculation that none would be forthcoming. The inevitable result, even as early as 1663, was ‘the renewal of attention to the succession’.38 If the same principle were followed after Charles’ death, then, unless he had produced a legitimate heir in the meantime, there were two potential successors: James the Duke of York, as the next in line to the throne, and James Scott the Duke of Monmouth, as Charles’ son whom he might decide to make legitimate, an issue that remained unclear in the mid-1660s. It was not until the 1670s, and the Duke of York’s conversion to Catholicism, that the rumours over Monmouth’s actual legitimacy or Charles’ intention to legitimate him became topics for more open discussion,39 but it seems likely that even as early as 1665 there was enough uncertainty about the question of succession to open the matter up to debate. Would the next king be Charles’ legitimate (as yet unborn) son, his brother, or his natural son, whom he openly recognised and favoured? The last of these three may not have seemed an impossible option; Elizabeth’s illegitimacy, after all, had been effectively cancelled when she became queen.40 When writing Cambyses, as Edith Hall has recently pointed out, it was not possible for Settle to question the principle of inherited monarchy directly, but his handling of the succession of power from Cambyses to Darius shows a playwright who is, in Hall’s words, ‘playing it safe’ as he negotiates the complex issues involved.41 In Rebranding Rule: The Restoration and Revolution Monarchy, 1660– 1714, Kevin Sharpe depicted the tension apparent in early modern English kings’ and queens’ presentation of their monarchy as divine in nature and the resistance to that presentation in popular culture:

38 Nenner, The Right to be King, p. 96. 39 Nenner, The Right to be King, p. 98. 40 Nenner, The Right to be King, p. 97. 41 Edith Hall, ‘Crises of Self and Succession: Cambyses in the English Theatre 1560– 1667’, in Beyond Greece and Rome: Reading the Ancient Near East in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Jane Grogan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 282–302 (p. 296).

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The more, from the Reformation onwards, that early modern English monarchs projected themselves and represented themselves as divine in words, visuals and rituals, the more opponents and critics contested their image: in pamphlets, cartoon, and popular festival or carnival.42

The civil war years had seen a questioning of the sacred and divine nature of monarchy, leading to what has been called the ‘deconsecration of sovereignty’.43 By the Restoration, it was not as widely accepted that social hierarchies were divinely ordained or kingship protected and sanctioned by providence.44 The sacred authority of the throne may have survived the interregnum, but it had been shaken. From the very start of his reign, Charles needed to rule with popular, national support. Even if the Restoration ‘tempered for a time the language of political division’, as Sharpe has pointed out, for Charles II, support for his kingship ‘could not simply be assumed but in a divided polity had to be cultivated’.45 It may be too much to state that Settle’s play—with its dedication to the Duchess of Monmouth—was a direct contribution to the succession issue. Settle would save further direct contribution for his pamphlets and plays written directly against James’ succession, such as The Character of a Popish Successour, and What England may expect from such a One (1681) and The Female Prelate (1680), ‘an undisguisedly and exuberantly anti-Catholic tragedy’.46 But Cambyses can nonetheless be read as an evaluation of the claim that monarchical power is divinely ordained, and an exploration of the issues at play when considering a possible successor. If the early 1660s were a time when some—like Dryden in Astraea Redux, printed in 1660—were keen to promote the sanctity of kingship and to reignite a traditional sense of its majesty, then others were prepared to open a space in which the divinity of kings and the question of how power is held and passed on might be debated. In this context, Cambyses contributes to the process of reconstituting and refashioning of ideas about monarchy which took place following its restoration: a process 42 Kevin Sharpe, Rebranding Rule: The Restoration and Revolution Monarchy, 1660– 1714 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), p. 481. 43 Harold M. Weber, Paper Bullets: Print and Kingship under Charles II (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1996), pp. 10–11. 44 Weber, Paper Bullets, p. 11. 45 Sharpe, Rebranding Rule, p. 481. 46 Tumbleson, Catholicism in the English Protestant Imagination, p. 133.

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of re-evaluation in which the very foundations of kingship, and the means by which it could be passed on, were open to debate. Achaemenid Persia formed a suitable background against which to explore these ideas, due to its reputation both as a powerful empire, and as one which had struggled with the issue of succession. Persia gave Settle an ideal context for exploring issues surrounding kingship at a safe distance. Ultimately, the succession of James II to the throne was managed peacefully, with ‘no outpouring of vocal opposition’, and the Monmouth rebellion quickly put down. This, in Sharpe’s view, ‘was a tribute to Charles’s representational as well as political skill’; it was certainly unfortunate for James, Duke of Monmouth, whose aspirations were dashed.47 But in 1667, a play about usurpation and succession could foresee a means of transmitting power which, as Hall comments, would appeal to his audience; in particular: the Monmouths would have been pleased by the portrayal of young and meritorious aristocrats with a biological relationship to the king stepping up—if reluctantly—to the responsibilities of power when a succession crisis loomed.48

If Settle’s play was indeed an early bid for patronage from the Duchess of Monmouth when she was still a rising star, then perhaps it is not too fanciful to suggest that Cambyses is an early attempt on Settle’s behalf to ingratiate himself with a woman who might, just possibly, one day be queen.

47 Sharpe, Rebranding Rule, p. 481. 48 Hall, ‘Crises of Self and Succession’, p. 297.

CHAPTER 9

‘The King, Who Loves the Persian Mode’: Tyranny and Excess in Nathaniel Lee’s The Rival Queens (1677)

Introduction: The Rival Queens The Persian play considered in this chapter will move us forward from the time of the Achaemenid rulers Cambyses II (who died in 522 BCE) and Darius I (approx. 550–486 BCE) to Alexander III of Macedon, also known as Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE). Alexander, king of Macedon and a member of the Argead dynasty, undertook an unparalleled military campaign across Asia and Africa, creating one of the largest empires of the classical world before he was thirty years old. Renowned for being undefeated in battle, Alexander invaded Persia in 334 BCE and in so doing overthrew Darius III, the last of the Achaemenid kings.1 This invasion represented the beginning of the end of the glory days of the great Persian empire. Reportedly the first time the Persian army had been defeated with the king present on the field, the invasion forced Darius to flee from Alexander’s troops, leaving behind treasure and considerable numbers of Persian people (including his own wife). Just as Alexander’s conquering of Persia represents a very different period in the history and 1 Yenne, Alexander the Great; Pierre Briant, Alexander the Great and His Empire, trans. by Amélie Kuhrt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012); Thomas R. Martin and Christopher W. Blackwell, Alexander the Great: The Story of an Ancient Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Houston, Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699, New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22618-2_9

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status of the Persian empire from the height of its powers, so The Rival Queens uses Persia, and in particular its status as an empire ruled by a tyrant, in different ways to Cambyses. Persian identity is more central to The Rival Queens than it was to Settle’s heroic tragedy; Lee’s Persia figures as a dying empire, given to luxury and effeminacy, representing a dangerous temptation for Alexander, who allows himself to adopt a Persian identity. In Lee’s play, as in Settle’s, Persia functions as a convenient setting for a drama concerned with the problems of tyranny and the limits of royal authority; The Rival Queens offers a contribution to contemporary debates on both kingship and views of masculinity. Nathaniel Lee had published three plays and some verse before The Rival Queens , or the Death of Alexander the Great, the tragic drama which marked the beginning of his brief period of theatrical success. After taking his BA degree at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1668, Lee had come to London; one source holds that he was brought there under the patronage of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who subsequently lost interest in him. After failing to establish himself as an actor, apparently due to chronic stage fright, Lee began writing plays, all on classical subjects: Nero, Emperor of Rome, in 1674, Sophonisba, or Hannibal’s Overthrow and Gloriana, or the Court of Augustus Caesar, in 1676.2 The Rival Queens , probably the most popular of Lee’s plays and, alongside Lucius Junius Brutus, Father of His Country (1681), the one to have received the greatest critical attention, was first performed by Her Majesty’s Servants at the Theatre Royal, before royalty, in March 1677.3 The play was highly successful; in the words of Colley Cibber (though he did not have a high opinion of it, and produced a burlesque of it thirty years later), ‘there was no one Tragedy, for many Years, more in favour with the Town’.4 Continuing its success in the later 1600s, The Rival 2 J. M. Armistead, ‘Lee, Nathaniel (1645×52–1692), Playwright and Poet.’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 September 2004. Oxford University Press, Date of access 28 September 2018 http://www.oxforddnb.com.idpproxy.reading.ac.uk/view/10. 1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-16301 [Accessed 9 August 2022]. See also J. M. Armistead, Nathaniel Lee (Boston: Twayne, 1979). 3 A. Nicoll, A History of English Drama 1660–1900, vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952), pp. 345–46; P. F. Vernon, ed., Nathaniel Lee: The Rival Queens (London: Edward Arnold, 1970), p. xiv; David M. Vieth, ‘Nathaniel Lee’s The Rival Queens and the Psychology of Assassination’, Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660–1700, 2.2 (1978), 10–13 (10). 4 Colley Cibber, An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber (1740), p. 64.

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Queens was performed almost two hundred times in the first seventyfive years of the following century, prompting a number of adaptations and other burlesques as well as revivals of Lee’s original play.5 The play was printed five times in quarto after the appearance of the first quarto edition in 1677 and before the end of the century, which also suggests its popularity.6 Quite quickly, the play became known as Alexander or Alexander the Great, and it is the downfall of Alexander, rather than the rivalry between his two queens, which has been considered to be the main action of this play, called by David M. Vieth ‘the first great Restoration tragedy’.7

Alexander Su Fang Ng’s recent study of the role and influence of Alexander the Great in Britain and Southeast Asia begins from the premise that no world figure has had a greater global impact than Alexander; Ng explores the development of multiple Alexanders in different literary and cultural traditions from a shared classical inheritance as a form of ‘intensifying cross-cultural engagement’.8 Thanks to the influence of texts such as the Alexander Romance, written in Greek and composed in Egypt at some point between 200 BCE and 200 CE, Alexander’s story was known through a vast array of texts during the medieval and early modern periods.9 The legend of Alexander as an extraordinary man, soldier and conqueror was universal, although, as Ng points out, Alexander was an ambivalent figure in both Eastern and Western traditions; some Roman responses were actively hostile rather than laudatory.10 This ambivalence, Ng shows, was reflected in the differing versions of Alexander present in Iranian sources: 5 Vernon, Nathaniel Lee: The Rival Queens, pp. xv–xvii. 6 Quarto versions of the play were printed in 1677, 1685, 1690, twice in 1694, and

in 1699. See Nancy Lewis, Nathaniel Lee’s The Rival Queens: A Study of Dramatic Taste and Technique in the Restoration (PhD thesis, Ohio State University, 1957), p. 5. 7 Vernon, Nathaniel Lee: The Rival Queens, pp. xv, xxiv; Vieth, ‘Nathaniel Lee’s The Rival Queens and the Psychology of Assassination’, p. 10. 8 Su Fang Ng, Alexander the Great from Britain to Southeast Asia: Peripheral Empires in the Global Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 9 Ng, Alexander the Great from Britain to Southeast Asia, p. 17. 10 Ng, Alexander the Great from Britain to Southeast Asia, p. 17.

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As Josef Wiesehöfer notes, there are two Iranian Alexander traditions: the first, influenced by Pseudo-Callisthenes, ‘presents Alexander as a Persian prince and mighty king, a Muslim sage or even a prophet, whereas the second one characterizes him as evil incarnate, the “devil’s” henchman and a person who, like no-one else, brought death and destruction to Eranshahr [the Sasanian Empire],’ while the second is a ‘Middle-Persian one found in religious (Zoroastrian) and didactic literature,’ in which Alexander is gizistag (accursed) and accused of ‘ruthlessly persecuting the Zoroastrian religion and the land of Iran.’11

Earlier seventeenth-century British assimilations of the Alexander legend had explored Alexander’s ambiguous nature, using him ‘as a vehicle for the negotiation of identity’.12 Markus Stock has argued that the Alexander legends were ‘documents of migration, translation, cosmopolitanism, and diaspora’, and that ‘Alexander served as a catalyst for medieval and early modern concerns of otherness’.13 Lee’s play, this chapter will argue, drew both on the ambiguity of Alexander as a cultural figure and his function as a mediator of concerns of otherness in his portrayal of Alexander’s story. The rivalry in the play’s title refers to the two wives of Alexander the Great: Roxana, his first wife, left behind during the Persians’ retreat, and the Persian queen Statira (daughter of Darius III), whom Alexander married and brought back with him following his conquering of Persia. Alexander, returning from his most recent battle, has once again had sexual relations with his first wife; grieved to learn this, Statira initially vows never to see him again. Roxana, who is carrying Alexander’s child, attempts to win back her husband’s affections, but Alexander, under pressure from Statira, commands her to ‘Go where I never may behold thee more’ (III, 304, p. 59). Roxana swears to Alexander that she will have vengeance, and, aided by a faction in Alexander’s court that wishes to see him overthrown, plans to kill Statira and breaks into the queen’s living quarters. Alexander learns of her attempt on Statira’s life just after he 11 Ng, Alexander the Great from Britain to Southeast Asia, p. 21, quoting Josef Wiese-

höfer, ‘The ‘Accursed’ and the ‘Adventurer’: Alexander the Great in Iranian Tradition’, in A Companion to Alexander Literature in the Middle Ages, ed. by David Zuwiyya (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 113–32 (pp. 114, 124). 12 Ng, Alexander the Great from Britain to Southeast Asia, p. 147. 13 Markus Stock, Alexander the Great in the Middle Ages: Transcultural Perspectives

(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), p. 6.

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has killed Clytus, one of his senior courtiers, while he is mad with rage, believing Clytus to be a traitor. Roxana and Statira face one another, and Roxana stabs her rival shortly before Alexander finds them; Statira dies begging her husband to have mercy on Roxana. For the sake of their unborn child, Alexander forgives his first wife, though ‘I must hate thee ever’ (5.1.219), and Roxana leaves him. Alexander then learns that his close friend Hephestion has also died, from an excess of alcohol. Griefstricken, Alexander dies in a state of mental and physical torment, with his faithful followers swearing to avenge his death. The state of passionate madness—both his own and other people’s—is one with which Alexander is associated throughout the play; he demonstrates his increasing incapacity to rule fairly, with tragic consequences, resulting in the deaths of his advisors, the wife whom he loves and himself. The Rival Queens , like Lee’s earlier success, The tragedy of Nero, stages the swift moral degeneration of a king who had previously enjoyed the merited support of his people.14 Like Cambyses, Alexander is portrayed as a tyrant who believes himself to be divinely ordained in his power. Alexander does not actually enter the stage himself until the second act; the audience’s first impressions of the king come from what his courtiers and friends have to say about him. To Clytus, the old friend and advisor who is the master of Alexander’s horse, Alexander is ‘our great king’ (1.1.21), ‘our hot master, that would tire the world, / Outride the lab’ring sun, and tread the stars’ (1.1.40), and is comparable to Mars or a lion (1.1.47), ‘the master of the world’ (2.95). It is from the mouth of a rebel, Cassander, that we learn of Alexander’s claims to divinity: All nations bow their heads with homage down And kiss the feet of this exalted man; The name, the shout, the blast from every mouth Is Alexander. Alexander bursts Your cheeks, and with a crack so loud It drowns the voice of heaven. Like dogs ye fawn, The earth’s commanders fawn, and follow him; Mankind starts up to hear his blasphemy, And if this hunter of the barbarous world 14 Anne Hermanson, The Horror Plays of the English Restoration (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), p. 84. For a comparison of Nero and The Rival Queens, see Hermanson, The Horror Plays, Chapter Four.

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But wind himself a god, you echo him With universal cry. (1.1.182–92)

To Cassander and his friends, who plot to kill Alexander in order to make way for Craterus, one of his generals, to rule in his place, Alexander is tyrant who reaches too high in ‘wind[ing] himself a god’. Alexander was reputed to have believed himself to have origins that were actually, and not only figuratively, divine. Both of Alexander’s parents claimed to have divine blood: his father, Philip II, maintained that Zeus’s son Heracles was his ancestor, and his mother’s family claimed to be descended from Achilles, a demigod. Furthermore, before he left Macedon for his campaign in Asia, Alexander’s mother Olympias was reported to have told him that he had actually been conceived by Zeus in the form of a bolt of lightning during a thunderstorm. Plutarch, in his Greek Lives, reported that Olympias then ‘urged him [Alexander] to entertain ambitions worthy of his parentage’ (312).15 Alexander, when he appears on stage, frequently thinks of himself as divine, whether in the present, standing with Clytus—‘now methinks I stand like the dread god / Who, while his priests and I quaffed sacred blood, / Acknowledged me his son’ (2.129–31)—or recalling himself on the battlefield, when ‘I myself appeared the leading god’ (162). To the rebels, Alexander’s tyrannical behaviour is no longer supportable. They recall the death of Philotas, whom Alexander had tortured and put to death on false suspicion of having plotted against his life: ‘I saw him racked. A sight so dismal sad / My eyes did ne’er behold’ (1.1.206–7). Though Alexander ‘would be a god’, to the rebels he is ‘as cruel as a devil’ (1.1.219), as they recount stories of his violence and readiness to humiliate his courtiers. One early example of this violence, when Cassander recalls how Alexander hit him, and ‘by the hair / […] swung me to his guards to be chastised’ (1.1.166–67), is the play’s first suggestion that Alexander has allied himself with the Persians whom he has conquered: the ‘chastisement’ which Cassander receives is because he ‘mocked the Persians that adored him [Alexander]’ (1.1.165). When Clytus announces Alexander’s entrance in Act Two, the king’s Persian accoutrements precede him: ‘Chaldean priests’ with ‘sacred fire’, bearing ‘white wands and dressed in eastern robes’ (2.92, 93, 94). These eastern 15 Plutarch, ‘Alexander’, in Hellenistic Lives, trans. by Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 9.

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priests are present in order ‘To soothe the king, who loves the Persian mode’ (2.94). Alexander’s identity as a tyrant, and as one who feels an affinity with Persia, is established before he has set foot on the stage. It is likely, in fact, that the audience would already have been aware of Alexander’s reputation for tyranny, although the source material on the conqueror is mixed in its portrayal of his achievements. The five Roman histories of Alexander, written by Diodorus Siculus, Quintus Curtius Rufus, Arrian, Plutarch and Justin, presented an image of Alexander from the perspective of the Roman empire, constituting ‘the collective result of the Roman invention of Alexander the Great’s reputation’.16 Although they vary in their presentation of the conqueror, they frequently portray a man who was known as ‘a violent drunkard infamous for mistrusting and even executing his own men’, capable of dreadful violence, corrupted by his success in the East. If Arrian praised Alexander’s noble qualities and excused his faults, most of the Latin sources criticised him: ‘Lucian made fun of Alexander, Seneca reviled him, Juvenal satirized his insatiable ambition, while Lucan in the Pharsalia treated him more harshly than he treated Caesar’;17 for Cicero and Seneca, Alexander ‘represented the worst of dictatorship’.18 This portrayal of the conqueror has influenced our perception of Alexander ever since; in the words of Diana Spencer, the ‘story of Alexander as we receive it today is essentially a Roman story’.19 Although the early modern period inherited this wealth of literature condemning the conqueror’s actions, Alexander’s reputation appears to have improved somewhat in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, so that the Alexander known to Lee and his audience would not only have been perceived as a dangerous tyrant. Indeed, a number of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources offered images of Alexander, and interpretations of his actions, which portrayed his tyrannical behaviour positively. In 1553, for example, John

16 Charles Russell Stone, From Tyrant to Philosopher-King: A Literary History of Alexander the Great in Medieval and Early Modern England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), p. 4. 17 George C. Bauer, ‘Alexander in England: The Conqueror’s Reputation in the Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, The Classical Journal, 76.1 (1980), 34–47 (p. 34). 18 Bauer, ‘Alexander in England’, p. 34; Stone, From Tyrant to Philosopher-King, p. 5. 19 Diana Spencer, The Roman Alexander: Reading a Cultural Myth (Exeter: University

of Exeter Press, 2002), p. xiv.

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Brende translated Curtius Rufius’ life of Alexander into English in The historie of Quintus Curtius. In this text, Alexander’s capacity for violence and tyranny are presented as examples of masculine strength in order to ‘set an example of manly virtue’. Brende offers his text as a guide to kingship firmly within the mirror-for-princes tradition in a manner which, in the view of Charles Russell Stone, epitomises Alexander’s reception in the mid-sixteenth century.20 After Brende, the translation into English and the dissemination of texts by Plutarch also introduced a different Alexander to a readership who were excited by the prospect of an allpowerful European conqueror and empire-builder. Philemon Holland’s translation of Plutarch in 1603, for example, depicted Alexander as an ‘ideal empire-builder’ and successful ‘agent of Greek culture abroad’. In his dedication to his translation of On the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander, Holland presented his edition of Plutarch’s essays as a guide to ruling as a philosopher, as Alexander (the pupil of Aristotle) had supposedly done, likening James I to Alexander as the classical ideal of the philosopherking.21 Alexander’s status as a philosopher was at the foundation of this celebration of his military and personal strength: ‘it will be found and seene by the words which he said, the deeds that he wrought, and the lessons which he taught, that he was some great Philosopher’.22 James I’s son Prince Henry, who died young in 1612, was also compared with Alexander, both as an encouragement to successful future rule while he was alive, and in elegies written after his death.23 Such comparisons and encouragements demonstrate the rehabilitation of Alexander’s image by the early seventeenth century, constituting ‘the recovery of the Greek Alexander and its insistence on forgiving his faults and praising his virtues’, so that seventeenth-century scholars and readers ‘saw in Alexander the pinnacle of ambition and achievement’.24 Plutarch was probably the most widely read authority on Alexander available at the time when Lee was writing The Rival Queens. Thomas North’s popular translation of Plutarch’s Lives was reprinted in 1657

20 Stone, From Tyrant to Philosopher-King, p. 202. 21 Stone, From Tyrant to Philosopher-King, p. 220. 22 Plutarch, The Philosophie, Commonly Called the Morals Written by the Learned

Philosopher Plutarch of Chaerona, trans. by Philemon Holland (1603), p. 1266. 23 Stone, From Tyrant to Philosopher-King, pp. 219, 224. 24 Stone, From Tyrant to Philosopher-King, p. 6.

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and 1676; Dryden would later collaborate on a new translation in 1683. Plutarch’s account of Alexander, as it was presented to its seventeenthcentury readership, showed a ruler who was: superior in temperament, in intellectual achievement, and in accomplishments to all men of his age. Minimized are his faults, and stressed are his magnanimity of spirit, his desire for action and glory rather than for pleasure or riches, his love of learning, his leniency to the conquered, his remorse for cruelty committed under pressure of battle and because of intrigues at court.25

It is also likely that Lee and his audience would have known Alexander through contemporary French literature; in the age of Louis XIV, Alexander seems to have offered to some an attractive model of absolutist kingship: ‘[f]or these authors Alexander was the ideal king, the shining military commander, the youthful genius attractive for his very excesses as well as for nobility of soul’.26 A number of French heroic romances centred on aspects of Alexander’s story, such as La Calprenède’s Cassandre (1642–1650), Cléopâtre (1648), and Pharamond (1661), Gomberville’s Polexandre (1632–1637) and Scudéry’s Ibrahim (1641) and Artamène, ou Le Grand Cyrus (1648–1653). The popularity of such works in England was doubtless responsible for the English imitative works which followed them, including Boyle’s Parthenissa (1654) and Crowne’s Pandion and Amphigenia (1665).27 Cassandre is a useful example of the mixed view of Alexander presented in the source material available to Lee, and his use of this source demonstrates the degree to which he sought to emphasise Alexander’s negative qualities in The Rival Queens. Cassandre was translated into English by Sir Charles Cotterell, the Master of Ceremonies to Charles II, in 1652.28 La Calprenède’s Alexander, via Cotterell, was a heroic conqueror, showing extraordinary bravery on the battlefield. Much of the tale, however, was told from the perspective of the Persians, and Alexander’s cruelty and 25 Lewis, Nathaniel Lee’s The Rival Queens, p. 24. 26 Bauer, ‘Alexander in England’, p. 35. 27 Lewis, Nathaniel Lee’s The Rival Queens, p. 24. 28 Bauer, ‘Alexander in England’, p. 35; Edwin Kuehn, ‘France into England, 1652:

The Cotterell Translation of La Calprenède’s Cassandre’, Romance Notes, 18.1 (1977), 107–14.

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tyrannical nature also featured, typified in his treatment of Lysimachus, whom he sentences to be killed by a lion. In Cassandre, as in The Rival Queens, which also includes this episode, Lysimachus kills the lion, and is arguably a better representation of ‘gallant nobility’ than is Alexander.29 With a wide variety of images of Alexander available from the source material, it seems that Lee purposefully drew from such sources the elements that would show Alexander in the worst possible light. In The Rival Queens, Alexander’s failings are largely down to his personal characteristics, such as his lack of rationality, his high opinion of himself and his predisposition to aggression. His capacity for tyrannical behaviour, for example, stems from his tendency to passionate and frequently irrational anger, which others observe in him as ‘the lightning in his eyes’ (2.396), or attribute to ‘madness’ (2.405). As Anne Hermanson has noted, Lee’s Alexander is frequently associated with insanity, either through his own jealous rages or the behaviour he produces in others, suggestive of a madness which becomes pervasive.30 Alexander’s madness and his tyranny both figure as a form of excess which characterises Lee’s portrayal of the conqueror, and which typifies his behaviour both as a man and as a king. This tendency to excess can be perceived in Alexander’s relationships with his friends and advisors. For example, his relative Lysimachus asks Alexander to give him the princess Parisatis in marriage; Alexander refuses, because his favourite, Hephestion, also wishes to marry her. When Lysimachus presses his suit, Alexander threatens to ‘use thee as the vilest Macedonian’ (2.255), calling him ‘My slave, whom I / Could tread to clay’ (2.264–65), promising to torture him if he again mentions his love for the princess, or threatens Hephestion (2.273–77). Clytus’ advice, ‘Contain yourself, dread sir’ (2.266), points to the very action which Alexander cannot achieve for himself, and no external force can achieve for him: containment. When Statira is threatening to leave him due to his infidelity with Roxana, Alexander claims that ‘I shall burst / Unless you give me leave to rave awhile’ (3.373); his passion is so great that Statira concludes, ‘My presence will but force him to extremes’ (3.384), and he begs her to ‘Pardon my last extremities’ (3.403). When she relents and forgives him, Alexander’s ‘ecstasy’ is so great that again he experiences it as physical rupture:

29 Bauer, ‘Alexander in England’, p. 35. 30 Hermanson, The Horror Plays of the English Restoration, p. 88.

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‘My heart will burst my breast / To leap into thy bosom’ (3.416–17).31 Alexander is continually vacillating between extremity and containment, the passions of love and anger that threaten to literally rupture his body and the need to, and the need to control them in order to be able to function as a man, a husband and a king. The greatest moment of tragic realisation comes when, having just killed Clytus, Alexander perceives the effect that his tendency to excess has had on himself and his capacity to maintain relationships with his courtiers: Then I am lost. What has my vengeance done? Who is it thou hast slain? Clytus; what was he? Thy faithful subject, worthiest counselor, Who for the saving of thy life has now A noble recompense; for one rash word, For a forgetfulness which wine did work, The poor, the honest Clytus thou hast slain! Are these the laws of hospitality? Thy friends will shun thee now, and stand at a distance, Nor dare to speak their minds, nor eat with thee, Nor drink, lest by thy madness they die too. (4.2.224–35)

As soon as he has achieved this point of clarity, however, Alexander immediately turns to blame Lysimachus and Hephestion, whom he censures for not having stopped him from killing Clytus, despite that fact that they tried both to dissuade him from the act and physically to restrain him. Again, they have been unable to contain him: ‘Ye held me like a beast, to let me go / With greater violence’ (4.2.239–40). Alexander’s tendency to excess is similarly played out in his romantic relationships. The premise of the play, after all, arises from the fact that he has married two wives, rather than contained his desires to one. Roxana recalls in detail the passion of Alexander’s marriage to her: What said he not, when in the bridal bed He clasped my yielding body in his arms, When, with his fiery lips devouring mine, And molding with this hand my throbbing breast, He swore the globes of heav’n and earth were vile To those rich worlds; and talked, and kissed, and loved, 31 Alexander is frequently associated with ‘bursting’; cf. 1.1.185.

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And made me shame the morning with my blushes. (3.107–13)

On his return from battle, Alexander’s court discusses the lust that he is likely to be feeling for his second wife Statira: Cassander: I know he loves Statira more than life, And on a crowd of kings in triumph borne Comes, big with expectation, to enjoy her. (2.52–54)

When she learns that Alexander has been unable to resist his sexual desire for Roxana, Statira recalls the passion of her relationship with Alexander, who ‘touches like a god’ (1.2.44) and ‘Vows with such passion’ (1.2.51). Alexander has a surfeit of these ardent relationships, in which his role is characterised by excessive passion and feeling. Another of Alexander’s forms of excess which relates to his sexual desire and identity is his masculinity. Alexander, like Tamburlaine, displays legendary prowess on the battlefield, and his physical strength is notable; in his own words, ‘Sure I was formed for war, eternal war’ (4.2.91). In his view and the view of those who love him, Alexander is physically supreme, his body reflecting his bravery and martial prowess: Alexander: In all the sicknesses and wounds I bore […] Did I tremble? […] Did I once shake or groan, or bear myself Beneath my majesty, my dauntless courage? (4.2.147, 150, 151–52)

Hephestion also attests to the king’s strength: ‘I’ll not believe the earth yet ever felt / An arm like Alexander’s’ (4.1.24). Alexander’s success on the battlefield and his physical superiority constitute a performance of masculinity in a period when ‘violence remained a significant foundation for masculinity’.32 In order ‘to establish himself as a man’ in early modern England, Anthony Fletcher has contended, a young man must participate in ‘a youth culture where manhood was learnt by drinking, fighting and sex’, with sexual prowess constituting ‘the most telling test of manhood’.33 In a culture where ‘violence […] conferred 32 J. Feather and C. Thomas, eds, Violent Masculinities: Male Aggression in Early Modern Texts and Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 8. 33 Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500–1800 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 92–93.

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manhood’,34 and sexual activity and martial prowess were the chief markers of masculinity, Alexander’s identity as being a soldier and sexually voracious mark him as highly masculine.

Alexander: Effeminacy and Excess At times, Alexander’s excessive masculinity spills over into something close to femininity. Alexandra Shepard has shown how Alexander was seen to have undertaken a ‘surrender of manliness in exchange for Persian riches and luxury’, and thus served as a ‘cautionary example’ to young men who risked becoming effeminate through too lenient an upbringing.35 In The Rival Queens, Alexander is periodically portrayed as womanly, both with regard to his body, and in his relationships. Statira’s description of her physical relationship with Alexander in Act One, Scene Two depicts a man who is made subservient by his love for a woman: He that has warmed my feet with thousand sighs, Then cooled ’em with his tears, died on my knees, Outwept the morning with his dewy eyes, And groaned and swore the wond’ring stars away? (1.2.15–18)

Statira describes how she cared for Alexander when he was wounded on the battlefield, ‘Laid him all night on my panting bosom, / Lulled like a child, and hushed him with my songs’ (1.2.29–30). The characteristic which she describes at greatest length is Alexander’s ‘sweetness’ (1.2.47): Not the spring’s mouth, nor breath of jessamine, Nor violets’ infant sweets, nor opening buds Are half so sweet as Alexander’s breast; From every pore of him a perfume falls, He kisses softer than a southern wind. (1.2.39–44)

More feminine still is the rebels’ view of Alexander’s body. Far from being so supremely masculine that it is immortal, Cassander insists that Alexander’s physical form is so mortal as to be female. When reminding 34 Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 132. 35 Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England, p. 28.

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his fellow conspirators that Alexander is only human, and thus vulnerable to physical attack, Cassander points out that the king has ‘flesh as soft / And penetrable as a girl’s’ (1.1.263–64). Alexander’s excess of romantic relationships also ironically places him in an effeminate position, as the possession of two wives renders him unable to control either one of them. On the contrary, Alexander repeatedly allows his actions to be dictated by the women in his life. To Clytus, he is an example of a man ‘unmanned’ (1.1.52), so bewitched by a woman that he has lost ‘all that’s right and reasonable’ (1.1.55). Alexander attributes his seduction by Roxana to a loss of his ‘reason’ (2.338), and Clytus views his consequent rash decision to imprison Lysimachus for pressing his suit with Parisatis to ‘love of wine and women’ (2.405). In Act Four, Scene Two, Clytus faces Alexander with the charge that he is a lesser man and soldier than his father in gendered terms, alleging that ‘Philip fought men, but Alexander women’ (4.2.142). The accusation drives Alexander into a rage; he responds with a repudiating list of his martial successes that begin with the refrain ‘I was a woman’ or ‘Was I a woman?’, rhetorically opening a space in which his status as a man is called into question even through its affirmation (4.2.154, 161). Furious at being confronted with the allegation of his own femininity, Alexander finally stabs Clytus with a javelin, insisting as he does so on his masculine identity: ‘Begone, […] And let bold subjects learn by thy sad fate, / To tempt the patience of a man above’em’ (4.2.212, 214–15). Just as Alexander both experiences madness and provokes it in others, so Alexander’s association with effeminacy is paralleled by his ‘unwomanning’ of his first wife, Roxana. When she relates her first encounters with Alexander, Roxana explains that she had led an Amazonian life prior to hearing of him, reigning over her ‘she-companions’ and teaching them ‘like Amazons to ride […] and to master men’ (3.78, 82, 83). Learning of Alexander’s conquests returns Roxana to a more ‘womanly’ state: ‘I […] / Left all my sports, the woman now returned’ (3.90, 92). Describing herself in this role, Roxana emphasises her silence and obedience; her role in courtship is to listen rather than to speak, and to obey her father’s commands: ‘I hung upon my father’s lips / And wished him tell the wondrous tale again’ (3.90–91); ‘At night I by my father’s order stood / With fifty virgins waiting at a banquet. […] O, how glad was I to hear his [Alexander’s] court’ (3.100–1, 102). This relation of her silence and

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obedience demonstrates Roxana’s adherence to conventions about appropriate female behaviour in seventeenth-century society.36 Following her rejection by Alexander, however, and his subsequent refusal to acknowledge her, Roxana declines to abide by any such convention. As their encounters with one another clearly demonstrate, Alexander no longer has the power to enforce or encourage Roxana’s silence. When she meets with Alexander before the banquet in Act Four, Scene One, the king tells his wife: ‘O madam you must let me pass’ (4.1.103). She interprets this as a request rather than a command, finishing the line with ‘I will’ (4.1.103), insisting ‘But I have sworn that you will hear me speak’ (4.1.104), and so he does, as she curses him to ‘Darkness, despair and death’ (4.1.115). Alexander’s treatment of Roxana has transformed her from an obedient, silent woman into one who is uncontrollable in her actions and speech; Roxana repeatedly describes feeling, as do others in the play, that she can no longer be contained by her body: ‘My soul is pent, and has not elbow room; / ’Tis swelled with this last slight beyond all bounds’ (4.1.123– 24). She refuses Cassander’s aborted attempt to express love for her in a manner which calls attention to her potential for voracious sexuality, which she imagines will kill her partners at the moment of sexual climax: […] if I were a wanton, I would make Princes the victims of my raging fires. […] fine slaves to quench my flame, Who, lest in dreams they should reveal the deed, Still as they came, successively should bleed. (4.1.198–99, 202–4)

By failing to control his wife as an effective husband should,37 Alexander has permitted Roxana to step outside the proper boundaries of a woman’s behaviour, with deadly consequences. 36 On the emphasis on silence and obedience in women’s conduct in the early modern period, see, for example, Suzanne Hull, Chaste, Silent and Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475–1640 (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1982); Kate Aughterson, Renaissance Woman: Constructions of Femininity in England: A Sourcebook (New York: Routledge, 1995); Merry E. Weisner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 152; Jessica C. Murphy, Virtuous Necessity: Conduct Literature and the Making of the Virtuous Woman in Early Modern England (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015). 37 See Lisa Jardine, Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (Brighton: Harvester, 1983); Garthine Walker, Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 64.

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Alexander’s excessiveness in his relationships is not confined to his two marriages. His friendship with his favourite, Hephestion, is also characterised by its intensity of feeling and physical affection. Hephestion is the first to address the king on his return and initial entrance on the stage, and Alexander’s first words are spoken to him: […] thou, my second self, my love, O my Hephestion, raise thee from the earth Up to my breast, and hide thee in my heart. Art thou grown cold? Why hang thine arms at distance? Hug me, or else, by heav’n, thou lov’st me not. (2.97–101)

Hephestion begins to weep at the suggestion that he does not love the king, who reassures him that, ‘I read thy passion in thy manly eyes’ (2.112). Reinforcing the commonly held notion in the early modern period shedding tears was more common to women and thus a sign of weakness or helplessness,38 Alexander bids Hephestion not to cry: ‘No tears’ (2.111). He then publicly states the strength of his feeling for ‘this darling of my soul’, whom he would die to save, and his statement of his union to Hephestion sounds not unlike an offer of marriage: ‘Give me thy hand, share all my scepters while / I live; and when my hour of fate is come, / I leave thee what thou meritest more than I, the world’ (121–23). Hephestion is to Alexander ‘my Hephestion’ (2.390), ‘my dear Hephestion’ (408), ‘the man / I love, and will prefer to all the world’ (2.233–34), whom, ‘like a mother’, he has washed with his tears (2.327). The entire court knows that Hephestion is Alexander’s ‘favourite’, as he is called by Clytus (1.1.68) and Cassander (2.70); he is also listed as such on the list of dramatis personae. Hephestion, following a tradition in early modern literature that often portrayed ‘a man’s love for boys and his friendship with other men as superior to or more beneficial than his love of women’, compares his regard for Alexander favourably with that of a woman, asserting that it is better than a ‘woman’s love’ (2.105). The eroticism present in the friendship between Alexander and Hephestion, conveyed in their physical affection and the strength of their feeling for one another, suggest a homoerotic potential to the relationship which, Alan Bray has argued, could be experienced as disruptive or 38 Jennifer C. Vaught, Masculinity and Emotion in Early Modern English Literature (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p. 95.

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threatening. Bray has described an ‘uncertainty in masculine friendship’ in which ‘the debasement of friendship was only too credible’, arguing that ‘[t]he outline of the “sodomite”, the betrayer, or the foe were never very far from the flower-strewn world of masculine friendship, and they could never wholly be distinguished from it’.39 Close masculine friendships, Lisa Jardine has argued, often held an ‘erotic charge’ which rivalled the expectations of companionate marriage.40 The eroticism present in Alexander’s close relationship with Hephestion, in which either one of them can play a woman’s part, either as weeping lover or weeping mother, is another symptom of his tendency to excess, which damages Alexander’s capacity for balanced, rational rule. When Lysimachus and Hephestion are rivals for Parisatis, Lysimachus knows that he courts death in opposing the king’s most intimate companion. On hearing Alexander express his affection for Hephestion, Lysimachus comments aside: ‘I see that death must wait me, yet I’ll on’ (2.115). He correctly predicts that Alexander’s preference for Hephestion will induce him to ignore Lysimachus’ claim to Parisatis, and will encourage the king in the vehemence with which he later punishes Lysimachus. Alexander’s relationship with his friend leads him into a political favouritism which damages the stability of the state which he rules.

Alexander: Tyranny in Context Alexander’s portrayal as excessively devoted both to his two wives and to his male favourite, and as supremely masculine and simultaneously feminine, demonstrate the potentially conflicting identities present in Lee’s creation of the Greek conqueror. These conflicting identities constitute a working-through of ideas about gender and sexuality which may be read as typical of this period, during which the development of gender relations and identities were themselves changing.41 The negotiation of the conflicting identities is not limited to the imagination of Alexander’s gender and sexuality; it is also bound up with his status as a tyrant, 39 Alan Bray, The Friend (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 200, 201. 40 Lisa Jardine, ‘Companionate Marriage Versus Male Friendship: Anxiety for the Lineal

Family in Jacobean Drama’, in Political Culture and Cultural Politics in SeventeenthCentury England, ed. by Susan D. Amussen and Mark A. Kishlansky (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 235. 41 Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England, p. 7.

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and is further confused by his simultaneous Greek and Persian identity. Political, national and gender identities were entangled in the drama of this period, in an inter-related system of meaning in which boundaries between masculinity and femininity, heterosexuality and homosexuality, European and Persian, could become indistinct. Alexander’s becoming Persian is the first of his tragic transgressions. The historical Alexander was known to have appropriated customs and practices from the eastern kingdoms that he conquered; in The Rival Queens, Alexander signals his adoption of a Persian identity through his marriage of a Persian wife, preference for Persian customs and even his choice of a Persian horse. Most visibly, Alexander’s Persian identity is signalled through his manner of dress, which becomes a fashion at his court. In favouring Persia, Alexander rejects his Greek identity: Alexander’s decision to ‘luxuriat[e] in Persian riches, disdaining Macedonian traditions by insisting that he and his courtiers dress in opulent Persian fashions’ has been read by Anne Hermanson as a rejection of his ancestry.42 At the beginning of Act Four, the choice of Clytus to remain ‘in his Macedonian habit ’ while the other courtiers wear ‘Persian robes ’ marks him out as a traditionalist who would rather ‘rot in Macedonian rags’ than ‘shine in fashions of the East’ (4.1.5–6). Later, Clytus is offered a Persian robe in Alexander’s company and refuses it, even when encouraged by Alexander to take it (4.2.s.d after l.71, l.77). Clytus’ refusal to dress as a Persian is paralleled by his distaste for the songs Alexander wants to hear, which he dismisses as ‘Music for boys’ compared to the sounds of the battlefield (4.2.103, 103–6), and his choice not to flatter Alexander when his other men do (4.2.128–30). In Lee’s sources, Alexander’s preference for Persian clothing and habits is seen as mirroring his distrust of his own men, including virtuous soldiers and advisors like Clytus. In Curtius Rufus’ Historie, according to Charles Russell Stone, ‘Persia represents a lack of restraint and rationality and a land in which Alexander’s suddenly immoral behaviour and dissatisfaction with his heritage irrevocably isolates him from his soldiers’.43 Alexander is described as copying the behaviour of foreign kings and rejecting the advice of his countrymen:

42 Hermanson, The Horror Plays, p. 89. 43 Stone, From Tyrant to Philosopher-King, p. 204.

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For he judged their civill usage and maner to be over base for his greatnes, but did counterfeit the heyghte and pompe of the kynges of Perce, representing the greatnes of the Goddes.44

In this context, as Bridget Orr has commented, Lee’s ‘deployment of the clothing motif puts it to highly theatrical use, as a visual means of figuring Alexander’s corruption’.45 The significance of Persian clothing has further been explored by Orr in Empire on the English Stage. As Orr explains, Charles II’s court had also in recent years adopted Persian dress as a new fashion; John Evelyn expressed his enthusiasm for this trend in preference to the fashion for dressing like the French.46 Lee’s portrayal of Alexander as both ‘unmanned’ and favouring Persian clothing thus constitutes: a rebuke to a court notorious for its license which had also, some years previously, adopted Persian vest. Costume is an important signifier in many of the serious plays with exotic settings but nowhere more than in this text, where it figures Alexander’s ‘unmanning’ in the most graphic visual terms.47

Orr has read the trend for Persian clothing at Charles’s court as part of English efforts to claim independence from and superiority over the French, ‘an assertion of sartorial independence from the tyranny of France’, while also ‘borrowing something of the imperial gloire of the Shah’, who ‘ruled over that was described by Chardin, the acknowledged seventeenth-century authority on Persia, as “the most Civilised people of the East ”’. As Orr continues, These were all characteristics that would serve as welcome signifiers of aristocratic difference from the French, whose aspirations to universal monarchy were reinforced by the authority of their fashions, their letters and their language.48

44 Rufus, Historie, p. iii, quoted in Stone, From Tyrant to Philosopher-King, p. 204. 45 Bridget Orr, Empire on the English Stage 1660–1714 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2001), p. 121. 46 Orr, Empire on the English Stage, pp. 1–2. 47 Orr, Empire on the English Stage, p. 120. 48 Orr, Empire on the English Stage, p. 12.

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Louis XIV may have ‘had the last laugh by putting his footmen in Persian clothing’, thus somewhat turning the tables on the English courtiers, but nonetheless the parallels between Macedonia as England versus Persia as France in the Macedonians’ appropriation of Persian clothing in The Rival Queens are apparent. Within this context, the play stands as a warning to those who may become enthralled by foreign glamour and prefer the practices or policies of foreign nations over the traditions and interests of their own country. In becoming Persian, Alexander loses sight of the rational and calm sense offered by those who, like Clytus, remain true to their Macedonian identity. He is, like Cambyses, a convert from one identity to another and, as such, not to be trusted. The historical context of The Rival Queens has also been addressed recently by Anne Hermanson, who has usefully paid attention to the French context in establishing the importance of reading Lee’s play in its own time. Hermanson considers The Rival Queens as one of a number of ‘horror plays’ produced between 1670/1671 and 1678/1679; this form of tragic drama ‘reflects and responds to political, social and artistic issues specific to this decade’.49 Citing the ‘growing disaffection with Charles and his policies’ of the 1670s, Hermanson identifies contemporary debates on the divine right of kingship, concerns about absolutism and fears of a Catholic successor—all of which were intensified by Charles’ closeness to the absolutist Louis XIV—as anxieties which ‘drove the focus of, and were influenced by, contemporary literature and drama’.50 The belief that ‘with foreign manners came “foreign softnesses”’ and ‘the slippery slope to luxury’ has been identified as a characteristic of the period.51 In this context, Hermanson argues, Lee’s drama demonstrates how: the threat to the stability of the state stems from corrupt power at the top of the hierarchy. He suggests sovereign power is not inherently just, and he rejects absolutism outright. In fact, in his depiction absolute power – over time – will always lead to injustice.52

49 Hermanson, The Horror Plays, p. 2. 50 Hermanson, The Horror Plays, p. 2. 51 John Spurr, England in the 1670s: ‘This Masquerading Age’ (Oxford: Blackwell,

2000), p. 8. 52 Hermanson, The Horror Plays, p. 85.

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Such arguments demonstrate the importance of considering the relationship between England and France at the time when Lee was writing The Rival Queens, and offer a reading of play which focuses on its concerns about political absolutism in the context of that relationship. It is also worth paying further attention to the historical context in pursuing a reading of the play as anxious about the prospect of a tyrant king who is both ruled by women and given to effeminacy. It was commonplace to observe that classical tyrants had grown effeminate when describing the downfall of their empires; classical accounts of the downfall of Rome, as Rosanna Cox has argued, showed that ‘tyranny manifested itself in effeminacy’.53 Persia, as has already been demonstrated, can function as an emblem of ‘foreignness’, standing in for other non-English identities, potentially dangerous in their influence. But it also had a number of significant connotations in its own right. As explored elsewhere in this book, Persia was frequently invoked as a luxurious kingdom whose tyrant-kings were prone to effeminacy. The Latin sources on Alexander specifically make reference to his conquering of Persia as constituting his downfall into degenerate living and effeminacy: Alexander the great that famous conqueroure, (before he enioyed the Persian Monarchie, and yet kept himself within the narrowe limites of Macedonia) did in his minde conceiue the great workes of vertue, and with excellent manlinesse, inferred war to the Persians and atchieued it with no lesse trape of manhoode. But after he had subiugated and brought vnder hys dominyon the Persian Monarchie, & superfluously flowed with all riches, as he which had subdued Persia, and almost had conquered the whole world, could not conquer nor tame himselfe, which did precipitate himselfe hedlongs into vile vices, through the copious affluence of goodes and riches. […] As soone as he increased with the accesse of so many kingdemes & riches, he douted not to take vppon him vnfit and base apparel, vnworthy of such a stout Macedoman, and to cast himselfe into all kinde of luxurious riot.54

53 Rosanna Cox, ‘Neo-Roman Terms of Slavery in Samson Agonistes ’, Milton Quarterly, 44.1 (2010), 1–22 (9). 54 Plutarch, A president for parentes, teaching the vertuous training vp of children and holesome information of yongmen, trans. by Edward Grant (1571), C5v.

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The acquisition of Persia as part of his empire, and thus access to Persian wealth and vices, is identified as being directly related to Alexander’s subsequent effeminacy and degeneration. Not only was Persia a risk to Alexander’s manliness and virtue, but it was also known, alongside other Muslim states, as being a place in which a man was allowed more than one wife, and a king might have multiple wives, as well as a harem, at his disposal. The harem, ‘one of the most contested of Eastern sites’, was a notorious example of Eastern effeminacy, corruption and decadence.55 Classical sources had established the Persian harem as a site of political intrigue and corruption;56 in the seventeenth century, Shah Abb¯as I kept the royal princes confined to the harem, which has been interpreted as leading to their lack of interest in, and preparation for, taking on active roles in the administration.57 In Lee’s play, Alexander’s proximity to women has a negative effect on his capacity to rule. His becoming Persian coincides with his gaining a second wife and thus disrupting the peace of his kingdom; the premise of the play is that the rivalry between Roxana and Statira has begun to ‘disturb / The court’ (1.1.65–5). In focusing on Alexander’s adoption of Persian identity, Lee brings into play the fact that Persia was well known to permit men openly to have relationships with multiple women in a different manner from England, and in ways that might have both domestic and national implications. Lee’s Alexander may have great military power and personal strength, and thus be able to do things other men cannot, but he cannot do the one thing that all men should be able to do in the early modern period, i.e., control his wife (or rather wives). The importance of a man’s capacity to manage the behaviour of his wife, and the parallels between domestic and political management, were well established in the seventeenth century. Lee’s twentieth-century editor, P. F. Vernon, draws attention to the 55 Pompa Banerjee, ‘Just Passing: Abbé Carré, Spy, Harem-lord, and “Made in France”’, in Emissaries in Early Modern Literature and Culture: Mediation, Transmission, Traffic, 1550–1700, ed. by Brinda Charry and Gitanjali Shahani (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 95–111 (pp. 96, 103). 56 See J. M. Cook, ‘The Rise of the Achaemenids and the Establishment of Their Empire’, in The Cambridge History of Iran, ed. by I. Gershevitch, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 209–91 (p. 206). 57 See H. R. Roemer, ‘The Safavid Period’, in The Cambridge History of Iran, ed. by William Bayne Fisher, Peter Jackson, and Lawrence Lockhart, vol. 6 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 277–78.

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centrality of the significance of Alexander’s failure in this regard in his introduction to The Rival Queens: A parallel between the authority of kings, of husbands, and of family heads may now appear far-fetched, but it was a fundamental premise in the political thought of the late seventeenth century. Theoretical controversy over the divine right of kings hinged on the rights of a husband and father over his wife and family. […] In contemporary terms Lee’s interpretation of Alexander’s practice in political and domestic government was all of a piece.58

A failed paterfamilias, Alexander is also a failed king, unable to act in the best interests of either his home or country. As a consequence of his lack of control over his domestic situation, Roxana’s behaviour leads to the death of the woman he loves and the loss of his unborn child as well as political tragedy. At the end of the play, as Alexander lies dying, he is unable to name his successor with any clarity. When Lysimachus asks the king ‘To whom does your dread majesty bequeath / The empire of the world?’, Alexander opaquely replies, ‘To him that is most worthy’ (5.2.57–58), most likely indicating Lysimachus, as these words are addressed to him, but not specifying a name. The play ends with no clear sense of the political future: Lysimachus takes control, swearing that ‘He will not taste the joys which beauty brings / Till we revenge the greatest, best of kings’ (5.2.73–74), but he does not know that it is Cassander who, having poisoned Alexander, is responsible for the king’s death, so revenge is not likely to be swiftly completed. The play thus ends in a state of uncertainty which is the inevitable result of Alexander’s failure to nominate a successor and to provide stability both during and beyond his period of rule. This portrayal of the tyrant who is both effeminate and unfit to rule can be located against wider seventeenth-century debates about political leadership. Ann Hughes and Rosanna Cox have drawn attention to John Milton’s ‘exploration of the political damage done by “effeminate and Uxorious Magistrates”’.59 Cox points out Milton’s derision of those of his contemporaries who refused to accept the right of Parliament to put Charles I on trial, with reference to precisely these features. In The Tenure 58 Vernon, Nathaniel Lee: The Rival Queens , xxii. 59 Ann Hughes, Gender and the English Revolution (London: Routledge, 2012), p. 1.

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of Kings and Magistrates (1649), Milton refers to such men as ‘slaves within doors’: Rather than being ‘govern’d by reason,’ these men are, according to Milton, governed by their wives at home: their failure to enact their potency in the domestic sphere, to assert the correct hierarchy of man over woman, means that they are alieni juris —under the power of another, and therefore enslaved.60

Here we see the same set of associations that Lee would later dramatise in The Rival Queens: a man who is controlled or overly influenced by his wife does not act rationally, and permits the disorder of the natural hierarchy, with dangerous political consequences. In Eikonoklastes, also 1649, Milton spells out the dangers of being ruled by such men, who are not fit to govern: Examples are not farr to seek, how great a mischeif and dishonour hath befall’n to Nations under the Goverment of effeminate and Uxorious Magistrates. Who being themselves govern’d and over-swaid at home under a Feminine usurpation, cannot but be farr short of spirit and autority without dores, to govern a whole Nation.61

As Cox points outs, such charges against Charles I were not uncommon: Milton’s suggestion that the relationship between Charles I and HenriettaMaria was perverted through an inversion of traditional gender hierarchies was not a novel charge, but was part of a sustained political discourse during this period, in which boundaries between the private and public became increasingly blurred.62

60 Cox, ‘Neo-Roman Terms of Slavery in Samson Agonistes ’, 8, quoting John Milton,

The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, in The Complete Prose Works of John Milton, Volume III, 1648–1649, ed. by Merritt Y. Hughes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), p. 190. 61 John Milton, Eikonoklastes, in The Complete Prose Works of John Milton, Volume III, 1648–1649, ed. by Merritt Y. Hughes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), p. 421. 62 Cox, ‘Neo-Roman Terms of Slavery in Samson Agonistes ’, 9.

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Similar charges were made about Charles II, with regard to his relationships with women and his incapacity to rule due to his effeminacy (meaning his enslavement to women, rather than feminine characteristics). Susan J. Owens quotes Pepys, who remarks on Charles’s ‘horrid effeminacy’, the ‘viciousness of the Court’ and the ‘contempt the King brings himself into thereby’.63 A number of historians have investigated the relaxed sexual mores of Charles’s court, where ‘the king led the way by openly displaying his relationships with his mistresses’.64 As early as 1663, Pepys records Thomas Carew telling him that ‘my Lady Castlemaine [Charles’s mistress] rules him [Charles]’.65 It was held that Charles’s mistresses, like Lady Castlemaine, had a power over him that was political as well as sexual.66 In 1667, Pepys was again discussing the King’s ‘horrid effeminacy’ with Thomas Povey, as Povey related how the King quarrelled with Lady Castlemaine, and she with another lover who was marrying another woman, ‘so they are all mad; and thus the kingdom is governed’.67 Charles’s promiscuity ‘was often seen as a sign of political irresponsibility’,68 and there are clearly parallels between Alexander and Charles, both of whom are sexually incontinent and perceived as being politically unreliable. Charles’ addiction to his mistresses and his inattention to the business of governance as a result of his pursuit of pleasure 63 Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, VII, 323–24, VIII, 288, quoted in Susan J. Owen, Perspectives on Restoration Drama (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), p. 1. 64 Joanna Rickman, Love, Lust, and License in Early Modern England: Illicit Sex and the Nobility (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p. 5. See also Harold Weber, The Restoration Rake-Hero: Transformations in Sexual Understanding in the Seventeenth Century (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986); Laurence Stone, The Road to Divorce: England 1530–1987 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); Ian Frederick Moulton, Before Pornography: Erotic Writing in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 65 Quoted in Paul Hammond, ‘The King’s Two Bodies: Representations of Charles II’, in Culture, Politics and Society in Britain, 1660–1800, ed. by Jeremy Black and Jeremy Gregory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), pp. 13–48 (p. 21). 66 N. H. Keeble, The Restoration: England in the 1660s (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002),

p. 98. 67 Quoted in Hammond, ‘The King’s Two Bodies: Representations of Charles II’, p. 22. 68 Owen, Perspectives on Restoration Drama, p. 1; See also Laura J. Rosenthal, ‘Masculinity in Restoration Drama’, in A Companion to Restoration Drama, ed. by Susan J. Owens (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 92–108.

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was a common topic in Restoration poetry; as dissatisfaction with his rule grew in the later 1670s and into the 1680s, ‘poems figured his pursuit of sexual pleasure as a form of tyranny’.69 Alexander’s uxoriousness and his propensity for being ruled by women can thus be read alongside other forms of literature which highlighted these qualities as signifying a monarch’s incapacity for just and rational rule.

Conclusion It has long been established that the drama of the 1670s and 1680s often closely followed and engaged with the changing political context, in what has been understood as manifesting its ‘intense topicality’.70 The apparent similarities between the courts and behaviours of Alexander the Great and Charles II suggest that The Rival Queens is a more topical and a more political play than has previously been believed. In the mid1670s, Charles, the king who ‘mind[ed] nothing but pleasures’, was criticised for the heavy expenditure and promiscuity of his court, as well as his own personal affairs, as his mistresses became embroiled in political activity and threatened to influence Charles’ position on various matters of state.71 The early 1670s had been a difficult time for Charles’s government. On the continent, Charles was embroiled in the third Anglo-Dutch war, which followed his declaration of war on the United Provinces in March 1672 and which dragged on for nearly two years, ending in an ignominious truce. At home, Charles was obliged frequently to prorogue Parliament, and to counter suspicions that he favoured Catholicism. Political recuperation from these events was hard to accomplish, and Charles faced fears that his court had become too closely aligned with French interests, a charge which was not helped by his affairs with French women. By the middle of the decade, ‘[t]he government was acutely conscious

69 Paul Hammond, Figuring Sex Between Men from Shakespeare to Rochester (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), p. 172. 70 Susan J. Owen, Restoration Theatre and Crisis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996; repr. 2003), p. 109. 71 The information on Charles’ reign in the 1670s in this paragraph is drawn from Paul Seward, ‘Charles II (1630–1685)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001. 0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-5144?rskey=HDNfrN&result=1 [Accessed 11 August 2022].

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of its declining legitimacy and its vulnerability to popular disturbance’.72 In November 1675, Charles had again prorogued Parliament, this time for a period of fifteen months; these long periods of rule without Parliament might seem to threaten to become the personal and absolutist rule of a tyrant like Alexander. In his promiscuity, his luxurious tastes, and his over-reliance on women—though not in his military or political success— Charles resembled the Macedonian king who gave in to his Persian tastes. Despite such similarities between the two monarchs, it would be too much to argue that Alexander is meant to be understood as a version of Charles. Rather, The Rival Queens uses Alexander and his Persian identity to facilitate debate on a number of issues which were pressing in the 1670s, thus constituting the kind of covert criticism to which Charles’ rule was vulnerable during this period. Persia’s particular associations with luxury, tyranny and effeminacy again made it a useful context for exploring such questions on the Restoration stage. The threat of absolute kingship present in late seventeenth-century Europe in Louis XIV’s France was translated on to the stage into the final phase of Achaemenid Persia, where its devastating consequences on a once-powerful empire could safely be played out.

72 Seward, ‘Charles II (1630–1685)’.

CHAPTER 10

‘[D]evour’d by Luxury’: Gender, Governance and Absolute Kingship in John Crowne’s Darius, King of Persia (1688) and Colley Cibber’s Xerxes (1699)

Introduction: Crisis of Political Authority The difficulties experienced by the royalist faction in the 1660s and 1670s did not disappear in the following decade. The Exclusion Crisis, during which a faction in parliament attempted to pass successive bills to prohibit James, Duke of York, from taking the throne, highlighted Charles II’s ‘lack of integrative power’. Despite exercising his royal prerogative to dissolve numerous parliaments, Charles was unable to prevent the Exclusion Bill from being passed in the House of Commons in 1681, though it was defeated in the House of Lords.1 Hence, ‘those who had celebrated Charles II on his return to the throne in 1660 increasingly found themselves on the defensive’ in the early 1680s.2 James II’s accession in 1685

1 Ingo Berensmeyer, ‘Nature, Law and Kingship in John Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel ’, in Literature and Society, ed. by Regina Rudaityte˙ (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2012), pp. 18–28 (p. 18). 2 Berensmeyer, ‘Nature, Law and Kingship in John Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel ’, p. 19.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Houston, Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699, New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22618-2_10

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took place peaceably, and to begin with the new regime enjoyed considerable success.3 Until the birth of James, the Prince of Wales, in June 1688, there was now a reversal of the situation under Charles, i.e., the throne was held by a Catholic monarch who would be succeeded by a Protestant heir: Mary, James’ eldest child, was a Protestant and married to William of Orange, the leading Protestant prince of Europe. It thus seemed that the reign of a Catholic on the English throne would at least be limited to James’ lifetime, and James was 52 years old at the time of his accession. The birth of a Catholic heir, however, along with James II’s admission of Catholics to public office and his alienation of the leadership of the Church of England, alongside other factors, meant that James was ‘functionally finished in England’ by the end of 1688, and by 1690 had lost all of his kingdoms.4 The period of English history from the later 1670s to 1688 constitutes a time of rapid, and sometimes unpredictable, political change. By the late 1680s, the related questions of the origins of political authority, the nature of public service and the limits of civic obedience were at the centre of a public discourse which was fuelled by widespread dissatisfaction with the Stuart monarchs’ domestic, foreign and religious policies. Brandon Chua’s description of the political climate with which he prefaces his reading of Aphra Behn’s The Widow Ranter, published (posthumously) in 1689 provides an equally useful context for our reading of John Crowne’s Darius (1688): A sustained climate of fear and panic dominated the political landscape in the final moments of James’s reign, as suspicions thrived over his intentions to enforce upon the English an absolutist, Catholic regime modelled on Louis XIV’s France. Once again, the fear of an internal political enemy with absolutist intentions provoked another round of political debates over the possibility of legitimately resisting political authority in the name of a common good no longer under the interpretive jurisdiction of an absolute monarch.5

3 Thomas N. Corns, A History of Seventeenth-Century English Literature (Oxford: Blackwell, 2013), Chapter 7. 4 Corns, A History of Seventeenth-Century English Literature, Chapter 7. 5 Brandon Chua, Ravishment of Reason: Governance and the Heroic Idioms of the Late

Stuart Stage, 1660–1690 (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2014), p. 112.

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In this chapter we will observe remarkably similar concerns being played out in Crowne’s play, as Crowne uses the failing Achaemenid empire to explore the final stages of the Stuart monarchy. Darius , like The Widow Ranter, can be read as ‘a response to the crisis of political authority of the later 1680s, and to the troubling relationship between the age’s political turmoil and the political manipulation of public fears’.6 Both of the plays considered in this chapter are reactions to crises of political authority, the reigns of the Achaemenid kings Darius III and Xerxes I providing opportunities for the exploration of the ways in which absolutist monarchs wield and pass on power, and Persia forming an ideal location in which to set these stories of political intrigue and division. During this period of ‘intense topicality’ in English drama,7 Persia continued to provide a useful background for setting plays concerning political intrigue. One example is Thomas Southerne’s The Persian Prince, or the Loyal Brother (1682), set in Safavid Persia, in which the loyal brother of the king, Tachmas, is a thinly veiled portrait for James II, and Ismail, ‘a Villanous favourite’, has been read as representing the Earl of Shaftesbury.8 This chapter will explore the ways in which two plays about Achaemenid Persia posed questions concerning kingship (and especially the question of divine sanction for rule), tyranny, rebellion and the succession of power. Persia was a useful backdrop for exploring these questions because, as we have seen, audiences would have been familiar with its connotations of tyranny, luxury, effeminacy and the difficulty of peaceful succession. Moreover, those who had read their Plutarch would be familiar with the idea that Achaemenid kings considered themselves— and were considered by others—to be actually divine. The ritual practices and ceremonies undertaken by magi at a king’s investiture and described by Plutarch ‘showed that Achaemenid royalty was sacred’.9 This made Persia an especially convenient setting for plays interested in the ramifications of a belief in the divine right of kings. Similarly, the question of succession was renownedly difficult in the Achaemenid dynasty, a fact

6 Chua, Ravishment of Reason, p. 112. 7 Owen, Restoration Theatre and Crisis, p. 109. 8 Allardyce Nicoll, A History of English Drama 1660–1900, Volume 1: Restoration

Drama 1660–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952), p. 153. 9 Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, p. 523.

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that is testified to by the frequency of its royal assassinations.10 It is not surprising that dramatists interested in these questions turned to Achaemenid Persia in order to consider the pressing political questions of their own times.

John Crowne, Darius and Two Modes of Kingship A number of John Crowne’s plays from this period, as Susan J. Owen has demonstrated, engaged with the politics of the time, and not always in a favourable manner; Owen reads The Ambitious Statesman (1679), for example, as ‘scathingly critical of the court’.11 In the case of Crowne, Owen has argued, the politics of his plays went through many shifts, changing ‘from season to season with the shifts in the immediate political situation’ although arguably within ‘a consistent nexus of attitudes and opinions’.12 It’s likely that Crowne’s personal position, that is, his poverty, and consequent pressing need for patronage, was a factor in these vacillations of position, although it is also true that all playwrights were obliged to produce plays that immediately pleased the audiences of the time. In consequence, ‘the drama was more likely to be intensely topical because it was still perceived as essentially popular’.13 For Crowne, frequent political vacillation may also have been a learned trait, replicating as it did the necessary changes and shifts of his father’s life, as well as his own. John Crowne was the son of William Crowne, who as a young man travelled in Germany with a mission from Charles I, probably serving as tutor for the earl of Arundel’s grandson, Henry Howard.14 In 1637, William published A true relation of all the remarkable places and passages observed in the travels of Thomas, Lord Howard, earle of Arundell and 10 Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, p. 567. 11 Owen, Restoration Theatre and Crisis, p. 71. 12 Owen, Restoration Theatre and Crisis, p. 108. 13 Owen, Restoration Theatre and Crisis, p. 109. 14 The biographical information given in this paragraph is taken from Beth S.

Neman, ‘Crowne, John (bap. 1641, d. 1712)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001. 0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-6832?rskey=pWjinz&result=1 [Accessed 11 August 2022]; and S. Sengupta, ‘Biographical Notes on John Crowne’, Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 6 (1982), 26–30.

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Surrey, dedicated to the earl. William, who is described in his ODNB entry as ‘a man of extraordinary political prudence and astuteness, who managed to succeed in a career of public service whatever the politics’, secured major offices in the parliamentary cause, and garnered enough wealth and influence to buy into a proprietorial partnership for the territory of Nova Scotia, which Cromwell signed in the August of 1656. In 1657, John Crowne sailed with his father for Nova Scotia, returning for the coronation in 1661, and remaining there when his father left to pursue his interests in America. His own formative political experiences were thus mixed: though a royalist, Crowne spent a number of years living amongst dissenters in New England, where he was a student at Harvard University.15 On his return to England, he eventually made a successful career for himself as a playwright, turning his attention to whichever faction was in power, and managing to remain in royal favour throughout his thirty-year career. In his ODNB entry, Beth Neman concurs with John Genest’s judgement that Crowne’s was a ‘career of loyalty’ rather than one of conviction.16 Throughout his career, when the court party altered, Crowne changed the political tenor of his plays accordingly, although he was not always successful in matching his drama to the mood of the times: in detailing Crowne’s shifts between the Whig and Tory sides in the late 1670s and early 1680s, Neman notes a number of theatrical misjudgements on Crowne’s behalf. His 1683 play City Politiques , for example, a comedy set in mid-sixteenth-century Naples, was suppressed due to its presentation of the Whigs as ‘the cuckolds, cuckolders, dupes, and witlings of conventional scatological farce’.17 Crowne was well established as a playwright by 1688, having produced six plays over thirteen years. Darius , King of Persia, first performed in April of that year and first printed in quarto later in 1688, was written at the height of Crowne’s success. It is recorded that James II gave him £20 for it, although the play was not especially successful in terms of its popularity; Crowne did well out of it financially because the King attended the third night, on which, according to custom, the proceeds went to the playwright. The play is set in Persia prior to Alexander’s conquering of

15 Owen, Restoration Theatre and Crisis, p. 71. 16 John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830,

10 vols, vol. 1 (Bath: Carrington, 1832), p. 124. 17 Neman, ‘Crowne, John (bap. 1641, d. 1712)’.

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Darius, who heads an amalgamated army comprised of Greeks and other nationalities as well as Persians. The main action of the play concerns Darius’s overthrow by Alexander, with the play beginning as the Persian army are being defeated by the Macedonians, Darius’s wife and children having been captured by his enemy. Though some of his men remain loyal to Darius, others, including the leaders of various Persian provinces, begin to plot against him, and eventually Darius is asked to resign his crown to one of them, Bessus. As Alexander approaches the Persians flee, and Darius is prevented from killing himself by his general, Artabasus. The rebel leaders, under pretence of guarding Darius, kill him when he refuses their requests for more power. Those loyal to Darius then kill the rebels on learning of the king’s death. At the end of the play, the bodies of the rebels are displayed, ‘hung in Chains, and stuck with Darts ’, Darius’ ghost appears on stage, ‘brightly habited’, offering a ‘happy Vision’ to his loyal followers, and Artabasus concludes that ‘Death shews it truly, Life is a false light, / But the true Diamond, appears by Night’.18 With its political machinations, threat of instability and interest in the ways in which power is wielded and transmitted, Crowne’s Darius can be read, like other plays of the period, as a response ‘to the crisis of political authority of the later 1680s’.19 Although Alexander never actually appears on the stage, he is presented through his reported actions as the epitome of strength and masculinity: militarily forceful and successful, but also measured, merciful and magnanimous. In these qualities, Darius compares negatively: not only is he weaker on the battlefield, but his personal characteristics are those of a frailer, lesser man. For example, when he learns that his wife has died in captivity, and that Alexander mourned her death, Darius immediately presumes that ‘There was a friendship grown between them’ and that Alexander ‘had Favours from her’, hinting at the possibility of a closer relationship between the two: ‘Men lament not the death of Enemies’ (p. 9). Darius is greatly pained at this idea—‘I cannot bear the Thought […] it will make me mad’—but Tyriotes, his informant, corrects his misapprehension:

18 John Crowne, Darius King of Persia a tragedy as it is acted by Their Majesties servants (1688), p. 69. All further references will be from this edition and will be given in parentheses. 19 Chua, Ravishment of Reason, p. 112.

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The virtuous Conqueror did treat the Queen With all the Honour, Virtue, and the pure Religion due, to one so much Divine.

He never saw her beauteous Face but once. And then, to give her comfort for her loss. Her Divine Beauties only tempted him, To greater Virtue; and he did not serve His Pleasure, but his Glory, by her charms. He serv’d her Honourably in her life; And when She dyed, he mourn’d the publick loss, And gave her Royal pompous Funerals. (p. 10)

The contrast between the two kings is stark: one, on hearing of his wife’s death, quickly presumes that she has been unfaithful to him with his enemy; the other, on hearing of his captive’s death, mourns and treats her with respect, just as he has done in life. Although the play has been described as ‘portraying a good king surrounded by treachery’, Darius is obliged to take lessons from the absent Alexander in both kingship and humanity, and is undeniably flawed, both as man and as king.20

Darius and Persia In recent years Gerald MacLean, Nabil Matar, and Jane Grogan, amongst others, have demonstrated that European audiences were familiar with Achaemenid Persia and its rulers through both a biblical and a romantic past. Matar and MacLean argue that ‘the ancient imperial civilization of Darius was most likely to have been more familiar to English readers than the contemporary world of the Safavids’.21 Ancient Persia, Grogan points out, was ‘much admired by those who knew their classical writers’.22 Elizabeth I drew on these positive associations of Persia in her address to the Safavid Shah Tahmasp, recalling Persia’s ancient glories, 20 Neman, ‘Crowne, John (bap. 1641, d. 1712)’. 21 Gerald MacLean and Nabil Matar, Britain

and the Islamic World, 1558–

1713 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 14. 22 Grogan, The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, p. 2.

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and much of the drama of the early seventeenth century, as we have seen, reflects this broadly positive view of Persia and its people. The Darius of Crowne’s play is Darius III, the last king of the Achaemenid empire, who ruled over an unstable and rebellious Persia from 336 to 330 BCE. Alexander invaded Persia in 334 BCE, and Darius spent most of his reign beleaguered by Alexander’s forces, who beat him in repeated battles and eventually succeeded in taking Persepolis, the capital, continually forcing him to flee in order to preserve his life. In Crowne’s play the Persians have little to recommend them, being portrayed as ineffectual, cowardly and weak, particularly in the eyes of their associates. Like many of his contemporaries, Crowne establishes the Persians’ effeminacy at an early stage of the action. In Act One, Scene Two, Bessus, Nabarzanes and Dataphernes, all soldiers, discuss the possibility that the Persians will win the current battle in which they are engaged. Bessus and Dataphernes are viceroys of two Persian provinces, Hircania and Bactria respectively, and recognise that Persia is dependent on their military backing; at a later stage of the battle, the two viceroys choose to withdraw their support for Darius, thus assisting the Greek victory. Their decision is informed by their perception of the Persians as having been made weak and effeminate through luxury, and their disdain for Persian systems of governance. Dataphernes scorns the notion that Persia should rule over their provinces: They Govern us! they ha’ not power to rule Men, Wine, or Women; or their own Silk-worms. The Men are all devour’d by Luxury, And Alexander only has the Orts. (p. 5)

With Persian men having been ‘devour’d’ by luxury, Persia is no longer able to control its provinces and so to command their support; within this context, the reference to Persian ‘Silk-worms’ is worth considering. The Persian production of silk was perceived to be one of its wealthiest industries and one at which it clearly excelled over Europe. The majority of the silk spun in Europe during the early modern period was produced in Persia, in what is now northwestern Iran.23 Adam Olearius’ account of his travels in Persia in the 1630s, translated into English by John Davies 23 Ina Baghdiantz, The Shah’s Silk for Europe’s Silver: The Eurasian Trade of the Julfa Armenians in Safavid Iran and India (1530–1750) (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), p. 1.

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as The voyages and travells of the ambassadors sent by Frederick, Duke of Holstein, to the great Duke of Muscovy and the King of Persia in 1662, refers frequently to the production and use of silk in Persia. Olearius emphasises the Persians’ superiority in the silk trade: ‘In this commodity of silk consists the greatest trade of all Persia, nay in a manner of all the East, as it is in effect the most richest and most noble of any that is driven in Europe’.24 He also reports that most Persian silk is traded in foreign markets, including English ones, being ‘sold into Turkey, the Indies, Italy, and to the English and Dutch’. Silk production was actually an extraordinarily complex and careful process, as Olearius described in his account: it took many weeks of vigilant nurturing before a worm would begin to produce silk, and the lengthy process had numerous stages and challenges.25 Hence, in accordance with the soldiers’ perception that Persian governance involves an inversion of proper orders and hierarchies, Dataphernes’ image of the Persians as unable to rule over their own worms is a complete over-turning of the presentation in contemporary travel writing of Persian skill and diligence in this area of production and trade. The topsy-turvy nature of Persian systems of governance is further suggested through the preponderance of women in Persian society. In the view of Bessus, the great richness of the Persian empire has led to an excess of women; the presence of women, slavery and vice has ‘depopulated’ Persia of its men, so that there are none left at all: Nay, I have ever thought, a Persian King· Was at the most but Master of a Mint. Persia has Gold and Jewels, but no Men; It has been long depopulated, all By Slavery, and Vice; by Women too. Women shou’d fill, and they unman, their Towns, War lays ’em not so wast, War mars and makes. This War has made more Men, than it has kill’d; 24 Adam Olearius, The Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors sent by Frederick Duke of Holstein, to the Great Duke of Muscovy, and the King of Persia, trans. by John Davies (1662), p. 313. 25 Olearius, Voyages and Travels, pp. 312–13. See Gerhard Weiss, In Search of

Silk: Adam Olearius’ Mission to Russia and Persia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1983); Elio Brancaforte, ‘Adam Olearius’s Travels to Persia’, in Unfolding the Orient: Travellers in Egypt and the Near East, ed. by Paul Starkey and Janet Starkey (Reading: Ithaca Press, 2001), pp. 119–29; Elio Brancaforte, Visions of Persia: Mapping the Travels of Adam Olearius (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003).

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The slaughter’d heaps were only loads of Clay, Where there was the Image of a Man. (p. 5)

Bessus suggests here that Persian men, though they may appear to be men, may in fact actually be either women or lumps of clay; true masculinity is lacking, even when it physically appears to be present. This uncontrolled effeminacy is perceived by the soldiers to have resulted in an effeminate and unwarlike Persian army: Nabarzanes: My Lord, they are all Images of Whores. They march into the field, rather equipp’d Like Ladies for a Ball, than Troops for War. Like Women too, with weapons weaponless, They dye unwounded by the sight of Wounds; And serve the Ravens up in massy Plate. The Persian Crows are fed in greater pomp. Than Kings of Macedon. Dataphernes: Oh! never cowards. Were at more cost, nobly to hide themselves. The Men cannot be seen for Plumes, and Gold. Nor can the Gold for Diamonds be seen. The Royal Metle is opprest by Jewels. Their modest Swords, which abhor nakedness, (Though Heaven knows in State of Innocence) Sleep in their Scabbards, as in Velvet Beds, Under rich Coverlids of cluster’d Pearl. (pp. 5–6)

Here, the behaviour of Persian men is again compared to that of women, in their elaborate dress and jewellery, so that their male identity is entirely hidden: ‘The Men cannot be seen’. There are direct suggestions in this speech that the Persian soldiers are themselves actors, dying when ‘unwounded’, carrying swords that are for ornamental purposes only. The reference to swords permanently sheathed makes it clear that the Persian army are worse than actors: they are actresses, ‘equipp’d / Like Ladies for a Ball’, ‘Images of Whores’.26 The Persian soldiers’ ‘Swords’ modestly ‘abhor nakedness’, sleeping instead in their luxurious ‘Velvet Beds’. It 26 On the representation of actresses as ‘whores’ in the Restoration, see Kristen Pullen, Actresses and Whores: On Stage and in Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 8; Cynthia Lowenthal, Performing Identities on the Restoration Stage (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), p. 2; Laura J.

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could not be more evident that the Persians are perceived as being so effeminate as to actually have become women in all meaningful ways, not just ‘Like Women’ but actually female. Thus, like both Cambyses and The Rival Queens, Darius stages its interests in national and religious identity and in the wielding of political power alongside complicated gender and sexual identities. Darius’ own effeminacy is expressed through his relationship with his wife, the queen (who does not appear on stage, having been captured by Alexander). When he learns of her death from Tyriotes, Darius immediately presumes that his wife must have suffered unspeakable torment in her captivity: ‘in her miserable vassalage, / Receiv’d Indignities I cannot name’ (pp. 8– 9). On being informed that, on the contrary, ‘the generous Conqueror paid your Queen / All Honours, that a Slave cou’d give his Prince; / He rather did appear a slave to her’, Darius then supposes that the queen has ‘Martyr’d for Chastity’: ‘She did oppose his Lust / And he has murther’d her’ (p. 9). Again he is informed of his mistake; Alexander’s treatment of his royal prisoner has been ‘All kind, and honourable’ (p. 9). The only way that Darius can believe this to be true is if there has been a reciprocal loving relationship between the two: Ha! This is worse--There was a friendship grown between them then. And he had Favours from her---it was so--Men lament not the death of Enemies. (p. 9)

He can barely bring himself to ask if the relationship was sexual in nature, so tormented is he at the prospect: I do conjure thee, by the love thou bear’st Thy self, or me, deliver me the Truth. Tell me---oh! Whither am I going now? But must go on, though the way lead to Hell. Tell me if Alexander---fortunate---

Rosenthal, ‘“Counterfeit Scrubbado”: Women Actors in the Restoration’, The Eighteenth Century, 34.1 (1993), 3–22; Deborah C. Payne, ‘Reified Object or Emergent Professional? Retheorizing the Restoration Actress’, in Cultural Readings of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Public Theater, ed. by J. Douglas Canfield and Deborah C. Payne (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), pp. 13–38.

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Victorious---young and brave---did not attain--What I’m asham’d to ask, and dread to know. (p. 10)

Tyriotes manages to convince the king that his wife was treated with respect by her captor in both life and death. ‘Honour’ and ‘Virtue’ are the words most frequently associated with Alexander’s behaviour: The virtuous Conqueror did treat the Queen With all the Honour, Virtue, and the pure Religion due, to one so much Divine. He never saw her beauteous Face but once. And then, to give her comfort for her loss.

Her Divine Beauties only tempted him, To greater Virtue; and he did not serve His Pleasure, but his Glory, by her charms. He serv’d her Honourably in her life; And when She dyed, he mourn’d the publick loss, And gave her Royal pompous Funerals. (p. 11)

On learning that Alexander treated his wife with restraint, Darius is not only humbled, but ‘vanquish’d’, entirely overcome. In this exercising of restraint and nobility, as Darius sees it, he is finally conquered by Alexander’s ‘Virtues’: Oh! Alexander, thou hast vanquish’d me. Till now, thy Fortune only conquer’d mine. But now thy Virtues have subdued my Soul; Have thrown me down, into a weeping Slave. I blush to shew my Face. (p. 11)

With his uncontrollable tears and blushing face attesting to his vanquished state, Darius is entirely conquered by Alexander in a manner that puts him in an emasculated position. Despite the fact that he never features onstage, Alexander’s conquering of Darius is in part due to his superior masculinity, in a play in which the gendered behaviour of kings is important because masculinity and effeminacy are directly related to the rule of law and governance.

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The presentation of the Persians as feminine in many characteristics is contrasted with the presentation of European as masculine. In particular, this is evident in the respective portrayal of their systems of governance. The Persians, according to the viceroys, are so enslaved to their king that they have no conception of the freedom of the people. Nabarzanes reports that: I often talked to ’em of Liberty. Alas! they understood not what I meant, For in the Persian Tongue is no such word. they answer’d nothing, but the King, the King; His Sacred Majesty, long live the King, That mighty comprehensive word, the King, Had all the Sense a Persian Thought cou’d hold. (p. 35)

Obedience, in Darius, is the preserve of women, who are morally virtuous but physically weak: ‘in Reason weak […] no Power to oppose’ (p. 57). Having no word for liberty, the Persians do not have the capacity to understand the concept. In this, they are contrasted to the Europeans, who ‘are Men, for they enjoy / Their Reason, wisely gather’d into Laws’ (p. 6). ‘Real men’ are those who live under proper laws; in contrast, ‘Here they are Brutes, for only strength commands. / Our only Law is, that there is no Law’ (p. 6). At this point, the Persians are contrasted to the manly Europeans through their bestial nature, rather than their feminine one. As Parvin Loloi has noted, Darius is noteworthy for the virulence of its anti-Persian sentiments.27 In this contrast of the differing approaches to understand the liberty of the people, there is a direct correlation between masculinity, reason, good laws and the state of being European. There is a claim that the brute force of Eastern tyrants is in fact a form of weakness, because it relies on strength for control, rather than reason (hence the Persians are cowards who have little independent action and little loyalty). There is also an implicit criticism of those who follow powerful kings without question: ‘Were there no Knaves, what use of Sovereign sway? / And if there were no Fools, Who wou’d obey?’ (p. 34). Implicitly, a good king is one who rules by law over an informed and 27 Parvin Loloi, ‘Portraits of the Achaemenid Kings in English Drama: SixteenthEighteenth Centuries’, in The World of Achaemenid Persia: History, Art and Society in Iran and the Ancient Near East, ed. by John Curtis and St John Simpson (London: Tauris, 2010), pp. 33–40 (p. 38).

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reasonable populace; a populace which follows its king through ignorance and brutality is degraded by comparison. The play’s staging emphasises the subservience of all Persians, including the most powerful, to their king. Darius’s first entrance on stage is accompanied by much pomp, including ‘Martial Musique’, priests bearing fire on altars and a train of officers in golden robes. All of the viceroys and generals present then ‘prostrate themselves, and kiss the ground’, with the exception of Patron (p. 7). Patron, being a ‘General of the Greek Auxiliaries, that serve in the Persian Army’ is emphatically not a Persian, although he serves Darius (A3v). The Persians’ slavish devotion to their king means that, when the Persian army erroneously believe him to have been killed on the battlefield, they immediately give up both the battle and their own lives: For with the King, the Hearts of thousands sunk, And our despairing Men no longer fought For Victory, but death; and had their wish, For thousands dye, and by a thousand ways. (p. 14)

Patron is clear that the failure of the Persian military efforts is due to the cowardice of the Persians themselves. Although ‘the gallant King’s alive’, in Patron’s view ‘He’s almost the sole Persian that has life, / Or has had any since the day begun’ (p. 14). Patron reports that, when he showed Darius that his soldiers had deserted him in battle, Darius ‘in despair, and rage’, turned his sword ‘Against his own brave life’, until Patron persuades him to feel instead (p. 15). The experience of this loss is perceived to have altered Darius’ character, so that he has not only lost ‘Dominion / Over great Nations, but his Royal Self, / His Passions rule, which they ne’r did before’ (p. 16), and in consequence ‘He’s all alone, as in a Wilderness’ (p. 17). The portrayal of Darius’ downfall is not that of a brutal despot, but of a man who is unable to rule effectively in the circumstances which he finds himself. In the play, the prospect of democracy is offered by the non-Persian viceroys, who wish to impose a more democratic system of rule. In their eyes, it is not the king himself who is at fault, but the system of absolute kingship: Bessus: In short, the Nature of the King is mild, But cruel is the Nature of his Crown. Then to whose lot soever it befals,

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If I survive, they shall not keep it long. Not, that I mean to fix it on my Head, But to Crown Nature, Freedom, and Sense. In which, all Men have equal shares with me. (p. 6)

Bessus argues that it is the kind of kingship that he practises, rather than the individual king, which requires remedy. Persian monarchs had not infrequently been portrayed as effeminate, as we saw in the last chapter via Alexander’s choice to adopt a Persian identity, and this portrayal seems to have continued to appear in later seventeenth-century drama.28 Cyrus, too, was supposed to have adopted effeminate ways, a tendency which confirmed Greek notions about the tendency of wealthy people to descend into depraved and immoral behaviour.29 From Xenophon onwards, Europeans complained of Persian effeminacy and the Greeks apparently enjoyed stereotyping Persians in this manner, just as travel writers would continue to do well into the nineteenth century.30 In Darius, the debate is particularly focused around the question of the law, or the lack of law, in Persia, which is also something of a commonplace in some contemporary travel writing. European travellers to Persia often reflected that Persia (and its neighbours) were lacking in civic law, both in literal terms (i.e., they had no laws) and in conceptual terms (i.e., they could not imagine living by the rule of law). A common idea from travel writing and associated literature is that one of the failings of tyranny is that a tyrant’s will becomes law. So Jean Chardin, writing of his travels in Persia in the mid-seventeenth century, notes that: The Republican Government is unknown in Persia […] None but the Despotick Government is known there, and they cannot conceive the Administration of the Sovereign Power, by a Plurality of Persons of equal Authority, nor even that holy and happy Power of the Laws, which serves 28 In Mary Pix’s Queen Catharine: or, The Ruines of Love (1690), for example, there is a reference to Alexander conquering ‘effeminate Persia’ (Act 2, Scene 1, p. 7). 29 Jane Grogan, Exemplary Spenser: Visual and Poetic Pedagogy in The Faerie Queene (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), p. 56 fn. 102. 30 Xenophon blamed the degeneration of the Persians after the reign of Cyrus in part on their effeminacy (thrypsis ), which manifested itself in opulent meals, clothing and palace traditions. Similar ideas were expressed by Plato and Isocrates. See Josef Wiesehofer, Ancient Persia from 550 BC to 650 AD, trans. by Azizeh Azodi (London: Tauris, 2006), pp. 79–80.

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as a Barrier against Tyranny. They are accustomed throughout the East to the Yoke of one Man, whose Caprice is a Sovereign Law, and who does and undoes as he himself pleases, without either Reason or Sense.31

Here we have the common conception that Persia (and other Muslim countries) are given to tyranny, but specifically related to their incapacity to understand law. As the Persians ‘cannot conceive the Administration of the Sovereign Power, by a Plurality of Persons of equal Authority’, they are unable to achieve democracy and can be ruled only by a ‘Despotick Government’. Thus Darius, like contemporary European travel writing about Persia, not only constructs an image of the Persian empire as flawed, brutal and effeminate, but also constructs an image of Europe which is designed to appeal to the English audience. There are other ways in which Darius speaks directly to its English audience, particularly with reference to questions surrounding governance. At the beginning of the play, Darius expresses his belief in the divine right of kings, perceiving him own kingship to be divinely ordained: ‘you great Gods, Protectors of my Throne. / I first implore your Favour to my Right. / Restore the Throne to me, the lawful Lord’ (p. 11). As the action progresses, however, Darius, like many another tyrant, begins to claim the prospect of divine action for himself: ‘Let us be Gods, and Fortune to our Selves’ (p. 24). He proposes that ‘To conquer Kings, I’ll be more like a God. / I will defend all Kings, even those unborn’ (p. 27). Here, it is the state of kingship itself that Darius means to protect, rather than simply his own position on the throne. He later cautions his viceroys to ‘do your Duty, Sirs, and I’le do mine. / Leave the dispose of Crowns to Kings and Gods’ (p. 35). At the time of his capture, Darius calls again upon the gods, perceiving the challenge to him as representing an attack on divine power: ‘rise all Gods! your Power suffers in me / Your Minister, and a deputed God’ (p. 50). Darius’ insistence on the divine right of kings and his valiant efforts to protect that right call to mind contemporary interest in the question of the divinity of kingship, and the English monarch’s assertion of his own status in that regard. As Howard Nenner has argued, James II’s accession could

31 Jean Chardin, A New and Accurate Description of Persia and Other Eastern Nations (1724), p. 166.

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be seen as a victory ‘not only for the hereditary right, but for a hereditary right that was indefeasible’.32 James, like his predecessors, actively maintained the divine right of kings: ‘It is God who bestows crowns’, he apparently said to Barillon, in reference to the question of whether Anne might be converted to Rome and the succession changed in her favour, ‘and it is far from my intention to do anything against justice and law’.33 In Darius, the divinity of kingship becomes problematic when it leads to absolutism, and both king and populace become unable to function in a more democratic manner.

Colley Cibber, Xerxes, Rebellion and the Divine Right of Kings If it was once thought that the belief in the divine right of kings largely lost its importance in the years following the accession of William and Mary to the English throne in 1688, by the later twentieth century it had been established that this was far from the case.34 J. C. D. Clark argued in 1985 that the divine right of kings was frequently employed after 1688 as ‘the most powerful (and, at that time, the only convincing) justification for monarchy’.35 Divine sanction was of vital interest to those who upheld the Jacobite cause; the Jacobites ‘inherited the cult of the divine right of the Stuart kings’, and many ‘Jacobite martyrs gave defiant scaffold speeches speaking of James as “God’s viceregent”’.36 The belief that his possession of the English throne was divinely ordained was also

32 Nenner, The Right to Be King, p. 148. 33 Nenner, The Right to Be King, p. 148. 34 For a discussion of this argument and its refutation, see Paul Kléber Monod, Jaco-

bitism and the English People, 1688–1788 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; repr. 1993), p. 15. 35 J. C. D. Clark, English Society 1688–1832: Ideology, Social Structure and Political Practice During the Ancien Regime (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 126. 36 Mark Goldie and Clare Jackson, ‘Williamite Tyranny and the Whig Jacobites’, in Redefining κ III: The Impact of the King-Stadholder in International Context, ed. by Esther Mijers and David Onnekink (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 177–99 (p. 177).

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held by the new king, William III.37 Gilbert Burnet ‘set the tone for an extensive propaganda campaign’ in 1689, the year he became Bishop of Salisbury, claiming that William’s accession had been part of God’s plan, representing the final phase in the deliverance of England from the ‘false religion’ of Catholicism under James.38 Thus, divine right theory continued to play an important role in the political discourse in the late 1680s and 1690s as it was crucial to both Jacobites and Williamites in their support for their respective king.39 Written and performed in 1699, the final play to be considered here, Colley Cibber’s Xerxes, contributes to the dramatic exploration of the divine sanction for kingship. In particular, Xerxes can be read within the context of contemporary political literature that faced a particular discursive challenge ‘in reconciling the revolutionary rhetoric used to justify the Dutch invasion – the notion that political authority rested in the people rather than the monarch – with the demand for obedience to William’s authority, and acquiescence to the fiction of James’s abdication’.40 Within this context, the question of the divine sanction of authority becomes particularly fraught: if the monarch rules through divine providence, where does the ultimate source of political authority lie, and what happens when that authority is abused? William of Orange’s arrival in England in November 1688 was initially more successful than could have been expected, and encouraged his decision to attempt to take the throne.41 His entrance into London on 18 December 1688 was apparently greeted with a ‘festive mood’, ‘the populace turned out to welcome him dressed in orange clothing and hats’, but this mood ‘soon evaporated’.42 William’s monarchy, like James’ before him, quickly encountered difficulties, and a number of factors meant that he was largely an unpopular monarch. Jonathan Clark has argued that many felt deceived by William’s appropriation of the throne, noting that, 37 J. Van Den Berg, ‘Religion and Politics in the Life of William and Mary’, in Fabrics and Fabrications: The Myth and Making of William and Mary, ed. by Paul Hoftijzer and C. C. Barfoot (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990), pp. 17–40 (p. 23). 38 Wout Troost, William III, the Stadholder-King: A Political Biography, trans. by J. C. Grayson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 219. 39 Troost, William III , p. 219. 40 Chua, Ravishment of Reason, p. 133. 41 Tony Claydon and W. A. Speck, William & Mary (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2007), p. 39. 42 Troost, William III , p. 215.

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even if there were ‘[w]idespread and profound dissatisfaction with the policies of James II’, this had ‘not gone as far as insurrection in 1688: that year did not see a popular uprising against the Stuart monarchy before William landed, even on the limited scale of 1641. James II was essentially deposed by a foreign army’.43 In the years immediately following 1688, ‘contemporaries could not be confident that the new regime would last a year, let alone three centuries’.44 Charles-Edouard Levillain’s reading of anti-Williamite propaganda has shown that Jacobites portrayed the new king as a military dictator and a ‘usurper who had both betrayed his father-in-law and broken the English constitution’.45 William himself was often portrayed in loyalist pamphlets as an interloper, ‘a Dutch profiteer with little to no regard for the wellbeing of his newly acquired British subjects’.46 As William and Mary’sWilliam and Mary rule continued, the regime became increasingly fragile, particularly due to William’s involvement of England in wars which left tens of thousands dead or injured.47 William’s unpopularity grew during the 1690s, especially after Mary’s death in 1694: ‘[a]s long as Mary lived she could act as a buffer between the King and the nation, but after her death at the end of 1694 William III grew more and more estranged from the English people’.48 William, who had always had to face open refusal to accept his kingship, was by the late 1690s the subject of a number of assassination plots, whose failure admittedly played into his own efforts to strengthen his position as ‘a providential Protestant hero’.49

43 Jonathan Clark, ‘1688: Glorious Revolution or Glorious Reaction?’, in Fabrics and Fabrications: The Myth and Making of William and Mary, ed. by Paul Hoftijzer and C. C. Barfoot (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990), pp. 7–15 (p. 9). 44 Rachel Weil, A Plague of Informers: Conspiracy and Political Trust in William III’s England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), p. 3. 45 Charles-Edouard Levillain, ‘Cromwell Redivivus? William III as Military Dictator: Myth and Reality’, in Redefining William III: The Impact of the King-Stadholder in International Context, ed. by Ester Mijers and David Onnekink (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 159–76 (pp. 159, 162). 46 Chua, Ravishment of Reason, p. 133. 47 Goldie and Jackson, ‘Williamite Tyranny and the Whig Jacobites’, p. 179. 48 Troost, William III , p. 216. 49 Levillain, ‘Cromwell Redivivus?’, p. 166.

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Plots against the king—both real and suspected—seem to have reached epidemic proportions in the last decade of the seventeenth century.50 As Rachel Weil has argued, the vulnerability of William’s regime, its ‘newness, the uncertainty of its survival, its legitimating narratives hinging on law and consent, and the intense scrutiny to which it was subjected by a Parliament frequently in session’ meant that ‘plot talks’ would have ‘an especially powerful impact on the new regime’s capacity to earn trust and therefore on its continued survival’.51 Thus the debate around the legitimacy of kingship not only continued to be very much alive throughout the 1690s, but intensified in its seriousness and potential to unseat the king. Concerns about the succession question also continued: if the transition from Charles II to James II had been uncertain and complicated in religious terms, then the prospect of succession after William, at least in the late 1690s, was no better. Given that William and Mary had no children, the best hope of a Protestant heir was Henry, Duke of Gloucester, the son of Mary’s sister Anne, and her only child to survive infancy. Henry, who had been a sickly baby, continued to suffer from various illnesses during his childhood, including a recurring ‘ague’ and complications that may have been due to hydrocephalus, resulting in an enlarged head from which his surgeons attempted to remove fluid.52 Following the death of Mary in 1694, as William’s popularity plummeted, he was rumoured to have homosexual relationships with his close favourites; numerous satirical pamphlets mocked the king for being a ‘sodomite’.53 As a result, in the late 1690s the prospects of William either producing an heir in his own lifetime or having a close male relative who might succeed him were slim, and the king’s position highly vulnerable. Once again, concerns about succession spill over on to the stage, and Persia provides a useful context for thinking about how power is handed on. If

50 See Paul Hopkins, ‘Sham Plots and Real Plots in the 1690s’, in Ideology and Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism, 1689-1759, ed. by Eveline Cruikshanks (Edinburgh: J. Donald, 1982). 51 Weil, A Plague of Informers, p. 4. 52 David Green, Queen Anne (London: History Book Club, 1970), pp. 24, 55; see

also Hester Chapman, Queen Anne’s Son: A Memoir of William Henry, Duke of Gloucester (London, Andre Deutsch, 1955). 53 P. Hammond, ‘Titus Oates and “Sodomy”’, in Culture and Society in Britain, 1660– 1800, ed. by Jeremy Black (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), pp. 85–102 (p. 97); Troost, William III , p. 25.

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‘[t]he sense of internal threat in the 1690s is dramatic’, then the drama of the 1690s responded by exploring the instability of kingship which contributed to that sense of threat.54 Xerxes was Colley Cibber’s third play and his first tragedy; audiences and scholars alike seem united in their belief that the play demonstrates his failings as a tragedian, at this stage of his career at least. It was produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in February 1699, and was not popular with audiences, or perhaps audience: Helene Koon, Cibber’s biographer, speculates that it may have been performed on only one occasion.55 This was a bad season for Lincoln’s Inn Fields altogether, as its other new plays were apparently ‘lacklustre and met with little success’, and Cibber quickly returned to the comic plays which established his reputation.56 (Indeed, Cibber himself seems to have preferred to forget about his first tragic effort later in life, choosing not to include in his 1721 collection, Plays by Mr. Cibber.)57 Critics have debated the reason for Xerxes ’s failure, usually concluding that the play is a poor effort at tragedy; it has been claimed that it ‘never rises above melodrama’ and is ‘[u]ninterested in characterization’.58 The character of Xerxes himself, ‘a villain of unrelieved wickedness’, and his litany of abuses, particularly on the unwilling object of his physical affections, Tamira, make the play hard to stomach.59 However, Ayanna Thompson has recently argued that the staging of the play is crucial to understanding it: ‘[t]he spectacle of Xerxes – the grandeur of the production – provides the key for characterization. The largeness of everything in the play – the masques, the thunderstorm, the magi’s cave, the torture scene – reflects the magnitude of Xerxes’

54 Weil, A Plague of Informers, p. 3. 55 Koon notes that ‘The satirical “Inventory” of Drury Lane’s properties in the Tatler,

16 June 1709, lists “The Imperial Robes of Xerxes, never worn but once.”’ Helene Koon, Colley Cibber: A Biography (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1986), p. 199. For the play’s performance history, see also Timothy Viator, ‘The Stage History of Cibber’s Xerxes ’, Theatre Notebook, 46 (1992), 155–59. 56 Judith Milhous, Thomas Betterton and the Management of Lincoln’s Inn Fields , 1695– 1708 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979), p. 140. 57 Koon, Colley Cibber, p. 199. 58 Richard Barker, Mr. Cibber of Drury Lane (New York: Columbia University Press,

1939), p. 33; Viator, ‘The Stage History of Cibber’s Xerxes ’, p. 155. 59 Koon, Colley Cibber, p. 36.

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ambition’.60 Xerxes’ monstrous egotism, which is perceived as a form of madness by his fellow Persians, is the endpoint of a political regime which has allowed tyranny to dominate for generations. As a play about Persia, Xerxes is informative about the images of Persia that audiences were familiar with the late seventeenth century, and the degree to which the ideas about Persia which have become familiar to us in the course of this book—its decadence, luxury, effeminacy, tendency to tyranny—is adhered into the last years of the century. As we will see below, there are also a number of shared characteristics between Cibber’s play and Darius, particularly in their presentation of a tyrannical king and the use and transmission of power. Cibber’s play tells the story of the downfall of Xerxes I or Xerxes the Great, son of Darius I, who ruled the Persian empire from 486 BC until his assassination in 465 BC, and was thus several generations earlier in the Achaemenid dynasty than Darius III. Xerxes is judged to have ‘possessed little of the genius of his father of Cyrus the Great’.61 His invasion of Europe, crossing the Hellespont from Asia into Greece, led to his portrayal as a ‘marauding invader’, ‘an irascible and impious despot’62 ; its failure finished Persian ambitions for extending the empire to Europe.63 The image of Xerxes which early modern Europe inherited from the Greek sources was largely focused on his poor character, the corruption he permitted at court, including the dominance of the harem, and the decline of the Persian empire under his rule.64 Cibber’s Xerxes, as Parvin Loloi has commented, is ‘entirely without redeeming qualities’. His portrayal of this Persian king, although it draws on Herodotus, ‘actually presents an image of him that is more extreme than anything in the pages of the Greek historian’.65 As the play begins, Xerxes, like Darius, is in the process of suffering a military defeat; following his overthrow at Thermopylae and Salamis,

60 Ayanna Thompson, Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage (New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 49. 61 Homa Katouzian, The Persians: Ancient, Medieval and Modern Iran (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 34. 62 See Bridges, Imagining Xerxes, p. 4. 63 Katouzian, The Persians, p. 35. 64 Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander, Chapter 13. 65 Loloi, ‘Portraits of the Achaemenid Kings’, p. 39.

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a Persian king has again deserted his army. The first scene opens with his soldiers expressing their frustration at this failure. In the words of one: ‘My Country’s Honour lost; my King with shame repuls’d; / Our Foes insulting; we still hopeless of Revenge’.66 The men resolve to take action, to rally the troops and find Xerxes, whom they call ‘the Drooping King’, in order to ‘Form him for the vast Exploit’ (Act 1, p. 2). Action, in their rhetoric, is associated with masculinity, and inaction and talk with shameful womanliness: ‘the Tongue’s a Woman’s weapon […] my Arm shall speak my Thoughts’ (Act 1, p. 1). On hearing from fellow general Artabanus that Xerxes is greatly weakened, Mardonius comes close to weeping, but rejects tears as ‘too Effeminate, No! / Let Girls, and Lovers weep!’ (Act 1, p. 3). There follows a lengthy contrast between Xerxes as he was at the height of his glory—‘this fatal Monarch Xerxes / Late Universal Master of the Earth and Seas’, ‘The Master of his Fate’, ‘This awful Man, that Muster’d half the World / In Arms’—and Xerxes as he is now, fled into hiding, ‘So low, that ev’n a common Fisher-Boat / Without one Slave, to wait his Nod was All / He cou’d Command, to save his Person in a shameful Flight’ (Act 1, p. 3). So far reduced is Xerxes that he has become deluded, ‘no more Himself’; for Xerxes is apparently insisting that, far from having been humiliated on the battlefield, he has been victorious: He says he made th’ Athenians Fly, He lost no Battle! Greece still Trembles at his Name, In Arms more Fam’d than ever, And that the Envious World should know, And when amaz’d I urg’d the contrary, He turn’d away. (Act 1, p. 3)

Rather than listen to his former advisors, Xerxes prefers the conversation of ‘Sycophants’ who are prepared to tell him what he wants to hear; fallen from his former glory, he would rather be ‘sooth’d’ by yes-men than face the truth of his defeat (Act 1, p. 3, p. 4). Xerxes, like Darius, has moral failings which are obvious to those around him, including an overblown sense of his own superiority and 66 Colley Cibber, Xerxes, a tragedy as it is acted at the new theatre in Little Lincoln’sInn Fields (1699), Act One, p. 1. All further references will be to this edition and will be given in parentheses.

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a capacity for hasty and passionate rage. He also shares Darius’ propensity for describing himself as divine in nature. In Xerxes’ view, even the sun, his ‘Brother’, hides his face from such a power as his own: Now by my yet untasted Joys of Power, This looks a God---It is! For see! The dazled Sun contracts His Golden Beams, he hides his Face and Blushes To behold a Rival Power above him. […]

By my Glorious Brother in the Skies, My Words have more than Power of common Kings; They’re something near! (Act 5, p. 45)

Xerxes’ claims to divinity, however, are undermined by the open theatricality of his kingship. Before he even appears on the stage, his return to Persia is scorned by his generals as being little more than a performance. Their use of terms such as ‘Triumph’, ‘Pageantry’, ‘Personate’ and ‘Gawdy show’ underline their perception of Xerxes’ arrival as highly theatrical: He has resolv’d to enter Persia, In a splendid Triumph, I saw him move Amidst his shameful Pageantry, in all The Haughty Pride, and State of an Insulting Conqueror; Poor Slaves, and Vagabonds are Hir’d, To Personate the seeming Captives of A Real Victory; vast Empty Coffers, Suppos’d of Treasure taken from the Enemy, High Castled Elephants, Rich Gilded Trophies, Spoils, and Armour, Trumpets, and Songs prepare his way, The People stare upon the Gawdy show, And Rend the Skies with Ecchoed Wellcomes: While he in solemn Pace stalks Proudly on, And ev’n out swells the Hero of a Theatre. (Act 1, p. 4)

Not only is Xerxes presenting himself like ‘the Hero of a Theatre’, but he has hired a troupe of actors, ‘Poor Slaves, and Vagabonds’ to perform the roles of captives, in the absence of any real prisoners of war to present to his people, and arranged for assorted stage properties, music

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and costume to heighten the effect. Though Artabanus quips about the prospect of this performance coming to an end (‘I’m sure’t must have an Interval’), for Mardonius it is a ‘Vile Procession’. The generals vow to join the audience and ‘mingl[e] with the Crowd to see him pass’, witnessing the spectacle for themselves. Xerxes’ claims to divinity and his reliance on theatrical pageantry are clearly seen as being related. The prolonged masque which precedes his return to Persia and his first entrance on the stage presents Xerxes’ rule as a return to a ‘Golden Age’. The Poet comments: ‘Ah! Happy People! / Happy Xerxes! / Now we shall turn the Glass of Time, / And make it run the Golden Age again’ (Act 1, p. 5). Xerxes is met by masquers representing ‘Loyalty, Love, Peace and Plenty’, who emphasise Xerxes’ role as intermediary between heaven and earth: Peace and Plenty fly before him; Peace and Plenty make Mankind adore him; Peace and Plenty Tune his Soul to Love, And give below, a Tast of Ioys above. (Act 1, p. 6)

As the music ends, Xerxes enters the stage in an action which the audience now knows to be a metatheatrical performance; it looks like a genuine royal progress, but we know it to be staged both literally and within the world of the play: ‘Enter Trumpets sounding, a Train of Captive Kings and Princes, Women and Children, several Nobles bearing Palms, Soldiers with Spoils and Trophies: Then Xerxes Advances from the farther end of the Stage’ (Act 1, p. 6). Xerxes’ first words claim an equality with the ‘unwilling Gods, those busie Rivals / In my Rising Glory, are forc’d / With sullen Envy to behold my Triumphs’, after which he is welcomed by Cleontes, who is described in the dramatis personae as ‘the King’s Creature’, as ‘Deity Ador’d! Immortal Xerxes ’ (Act 1, p. 6). Xerxes continues to participate in the action as though fully aware that it is a theatrical scene. When his people (all except the two sceptical generals) prostrate themselves before him and kiss the ground, he responds as though he believes this gesture of abasement, which leaves the ground covered in seemingly inert bodies, is actually a death: What means this sudden Face of Death? How fell these heaps of prostrate Bodies? O Spleenful Fate! They’r dead! Malicious Planet!

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Am I left alone to Rule, the Monarch Of an Un-peopled World?---’Tis well ye Pow’rs, Your dire Decrees shall be obey’d! Up! Up! From your sleepy Graves! Rise all! Revive and take New Life, from Power to give it. (Act 1, p. 7)

To the generals, this is clearly a performance, an ‘Amazing Frenzy’ or ‘drunken Fancy’, but in controlling the staging, Xerxes is able to continue the performance of his deity. In conversation with his magi, he calls for a direct attack to be made upon the sun in revenge for having ‘sunk and scatter’d my stupendious Navy’: ‘draw out an able Band of Archers, / Mount’em on the Battlements of you lofty Tower, / And let’em shoot a Thousand Arrows’gainst the Sun’ (Act 1, p. 8). Lo and behold, the staging performs this attack before Xerxes, his onstage audience, and the audience in the theatre. The stage directions read: ‘Thunder […] The Stage is darkn’d. […] Lightning. […] A show’r of […] The Sky is cleared’, and then Cleontes remarks that ‘The Sun appears again’ (pp. 8–9).67 The staging of the play, in which Xerxes’ courtiers are apparently able to recreate his challenge to the sun, which is perceived even by his loyal follower Cleontes as an ‘Extravagance’ to be humoured, demonstrates the degree to which audiences of both plays and monarchs are manipulated by the performative nature of the theatre and of kingship. In Xerxes, this performance of kingship has reached the point of mania, as his subjects are obliged to confirm his exalted view of himself and his importance, or risk grave reprisals. These are shown most vividly through Xerxes’ treatment of those who rebel against him, and especially Tamira, the wife of Artabanus. After Artabanus leads a conspiracy against Xerxes, he flees and Xerxes captures his wife in the hope of making her tell him her husband’s whereabouts. Xerxes’ treatment of Tamira is increasingly aggressive, as he attempts to force himself upon her and threatens her with torture, eventually actually commanding her to be racked in front of him: ‘Bring in the Rack! I’ll try if that can make / A Woman speak her Mind’ (Act 3, p. 25). After Tamira has been tortured, Xerxes is so moved by her stoicism that he calls for her to be brought to sit beside him. Tamira is then ‘brought in all Bloody’; when asked by Xerxes if he 67 The wording in the earliest printed versions of the play reads ‘A show’r of ’, with no word after ‘of’. I presume that this is an error, and that the stage direction should refer to a shower of arrows, but the text is frustratingly silent on the crucial word.

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can give her anything, she begs for her child’s life (Act 3, p. 27). Xerxes apparently grants this request, but, after she has left the stage, explains that he intends to use Tamira to catch her husband, and not to spare her child. His description of his intentions for Tamira herself is unpleasant even by the standards of stage tyrants: Oh! what a noble Gust will swell my Soul When she lies drown’d in Tears, and trembling in my Grasp! Nay, after my abhorr’d Possession I’ll hold her down With smiling Spite, and talk my Raptures o’er; In her unwilling Ears I’ll pour such Tales Of Loose Desire, her very Soul shall feel the Rape. And though--Her Words may beg I wou’d her Life destroy, I’ll make her Eyes confess that she partakes the Joy. (Act 3, p. 29)

The practice of torture is frequently referred to in Xerxes, and the strategic used of others’ physical pain characterises Xerxes’ tyranny.68 Tamira, like her husband and Mardonius, calls Xerxes a tyrant, and his behaviour to the rebels exhibits his tendency to tyrannical violence. Xerxes’ description of his treatment of Tamira to her husband is particularly graphic: I tell thee, Slave, I Whor’d her to a Dis-liking, And then she was unfit for Life: Nor cou’d I brook to let her live for thee, After the Stamp of Royal Love was on her. (Act 5, p. 45)

On learning that two of the conspirators have run upon one another’s swords rather than be captured, Xerxes wishes that he could torture them back to life: ‘O spiteful sullen Traytors! Bring in the Torture! / By Heav’n I’ll have’em Rackt to Life again!’ (Act 3, p. 25). His preference for hasty violence marks him, like Tamburlaine, as a stage tyrant who loses, or has lost, his capacity for humane behaviour. Like other stage tyrants, his violence is accompanied by a taste for luxury which signals his decadence and moral degeneration. The masque which takes place in

68 On the use of torture in the play and its intersection with race and gender, see Thompson, Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage, pp. 21, 46–49.

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Act Two immediately follows a conversation between Xerxes and Mardonius in which the latter laments that he has been obliged to remove his weapon and thus his martial identity at Xerxes’ court: ‘I us’d to wear a Sword!’ (Act 2, p. 12). Mardonius encourages Xerxes to pursue his enemies, the Greeks, but Xerxes refuses, commenting aside on his dislike of ‘Such Men’, who ‘are hateful, and will oppose my Pleasures’ (Act 2, p. 12). In the masque, the figure of Luxury is approached by various deities, including Mars and Venus, and their attendant pleasures, finally concluding that ‘Fair Venus Winns the Day’, as all the Pleasures dance together (Act 2, p. 15). Xerxes approves of the supremacy of love and luxury, ‘softer Pleasures’ fit to adorn ‘a peaceful Court’, while Mardonius, like his namesake Mars, states his preference for ‘Manly pleasures’ (Act 2, p. 15). Xerxes, like Darius, equates tyranny, luxury and effeminacy in a manner which once again demonstrates the usefulness of Persia as a means of uniting and exploring these kingly weaknesses. Mardonius not only condemns the king’s tastes for luxury and effeminacy, but also openly decries the performance of kingship. When he is arguing with Xerxes, and the king warns him not to irritate him and thus disturb ‘the sleeping Lyon’, Mardonius rejects this identification in a manner which again relates the king’s performance of kingship to his performance of his gender identity. The king’s perception of himself as a warlike man is shown to be false by a ‘Warlike Woman’; Xerxes behaves like a woman, retreating from battle, and now relying on words rather than action: A Lyon! By Heav’n I’ve seen a Hare, a Womans Courage Dare beyond thee; the Martial Artemisia, Whose Aiding Arm in Fight, supported and disgrac’d thee: The Warlike Woman shew’d a Manly Rage, The Courtly King a Womans Trembling Fear: Ever wer’t thou last in Battle, formost In the Flight, humble in Danger, and when Thy Danger’s past, Insulting! (Act 2, p. 19)

To Mardonius, Xerxes has become an ‘Inverted King’, so that to be disliked by him is an honour, ‘whose Favour is Disgrace, / Whose Frowns are Honour now’ (Act 2, p. 19). As the play makes clear, Xerxes is also seen as ‘Inverted’ in terms of his gender identity, incapable of

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showing true manly attributes, and relying instead on a performance of masculinity—and kingship—which have no basis in fact. The rebels’ resistance to Xerxes is another kind of performance. In calling attention to his hypocrisy, they dramatise what they perceive to be the civic duty of speaking truth to power. Mardonius articulates the belief that kingship should reside in individual merit, rather than the physical trappings of sovereignty: I ha’ no King, ’tis Merit, not a Crown That makes a King, when Pride and Sloth debase The Soul of Majesty: The Crown’s a Toy, No more in Worth, than what it weighs in Gold: I scorn a King, whose Robes can only speak him Royal. (Act 2, p. 18)

Aranthes, another rebel, shares the view that it is the responsibility of the populace to hold the monarch to account, when that monarch is at fault: When Subjects Are no more the Care of Kings, we then Have only left the Laws of Nature to Protect us, And Nature tyes us all to Self Defence.

[…] And shall we sleep, when from our Hands by Force, The Gripe of Tyranny has wrung our Fortunes. (Act 2, p. 15)

After Xerxes has been killed in a fight with Artabanus, it is Mardonius’ warning that ends the play. Kings and subjects alike are only human, and can only bear so much. To take revenge on a king is a serious business, and one that may serve as an education for those who are left behind to learn from it: Let Kings and jarring Subjects hence be warn’d, Not to oppress, or drive Revenge too far: Kings are but Men, and Men by Nature err, Subjects are Men, and cannot always bear Much shou’d be born before Revenge is sought: Ever Revenge on Kings is dearly bought.

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Yet, to our Woes, the Gods this Comfort give; From those that die, the Living learn to live. (Act 5, p. 48)

The didactic function of the play is also drawn upon in Cibber’s prologue, where he chastises the audience for not paying attention to plays from which they might learn virtue, and claims that his play has a moral purpose:69 Wou’d you but come with Minds attentive bent To laugh at Follies, Vices to resent; Warn’d by the Dangers painted, wou’d you learn To shun abroad what’s here the Wise Man’s Scorn. (Prologue, A3v)

In its characterisation Xerxes seems to offer little moral teaching, beyond the dramatisation of Tamira’s virtuous loyalty and Xerxes’ bloody tyranny. An exploration of the play’s political context, however, demonstrates its interest in a number of contemporary questions, even if it has little to offer by way of learning. As demonstrated above, Xerxes offers a cynical response to the notion of the divine sanction of kingship. Xerxes’ obvious failings as a king, and man, demonstrate the falsity and theatricality of his claims to divinity and divine support. There are more specific ways, however, in which the play offers a response to its direct political context. In the first place, Xerxes is timely in its attempt to read English politics in the light of the history of classical empire. In the late 1690s, and the period from 1697 to 1699 in particular, ‘[t]he idea resurfaced […] that England’s domestic politics could be read in the light of the history of the Roman Republic’. In the Roman Republic, following the second Punic war, the ‘muchadmired system of checks and balances came under increasing stress’, largely due to the permanent state of war in which republic found itself.70 In consequence, ‘emperors came to assume semi-monarchical powers in a supposedly anti-monarchical regime’.71 This provided a neat political parallel for William’s administration. Contrary to initial expectations, William’s policies, and in particular his insistence on having a standing army, seemed to be expanding his power excessively, and providing 69 Koon, Colley Cibber, p. 35. 70 Levillain, ‘Cromwell Redivivus?’, p. 168. 71 Levillain, ‘Cromwell Redivivus?’, pp. 168–69.

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him ‘with the same powers as the dictators of Rome’.72 Anti-William propaganda displays the depth of concerns that the king’s rule was fast becoming a dictatorship: No serious steps had been taken to restrain the King’s prerogatives. No restrictions had been placed on the use of the royal veto over legislation or on the monarch’s powers of ministerial appointment and his ability to shield dishonest statesmen. […] William’s regime was thus displaying a blatant disregard for civil liberties.73

In Xerxes, the Achaemenid empire provides a convenient parallel for a seemingly declining empire which is permitting its ruler a greater degree of power than is good for the state and its people. Xerxes’ reliance on his army and his involvement of his country in repeated battles abroad must have struck a note with an audience that had lived through the European warfare of the 1690s. In Xerxes, Cibber offered an image of the worst possible endpoint for a king who has been granted too much freedom, and whose reliance on judicial torture exemplifies his disregard for the welfare of his people. Xerxes’ habit of torturing those who disagreed with him might even have called to mind William’s use of judicial torture in the 1690s.74 As Mark Goldie and Clare Jackson have shown, propagandists writing during the 1690s also raised the prospect of resistance to dictatorial rule. Goldie and Jackson cite the example of Robert Ferguson, a propagandist for the Whig cause who highlighted ‘the court sycophancy of the Revolution Whigs, such as Gilbert Burnet, now Bishop of Salisbury’. Ferguson wrote that Burnet had argued in the 1680s ‘that, “when the laws of a constitution are publicly violated […] we may have recourse to the laws of nature”, thereby placing subjects “upon a common level with […] our rulers” and conferring “liberty to oppose them and defend ourselves and our government by laws established”’.75 Xerxes also explores and

72 Levillain, ‘Cromwell Redivivus?’, p. 169. 73 Goldie and Jackson, ‘Williamite Tyranny and the Whig Jacobites’, p. 182. 74 Goldie and Jackson, ‘Williamite Tyranny and the Whig Jacobites’, p. 184. 75 Goldie and Jackson, ‘Williamite Tyranny and the Whig Jacobites’, pp. 182–83,

quoting Robert Ferguson, Letter to Mr. Secretary Trenchard discovering a conspiracy against the laws and ancient constitution of England: with reflections on the present pretended plot (1694), pp. 4, 34.

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promotes the idea of resistance to tyranny through the rebellion of the Persian generals, who survive Xerxes and offer a moral reading of his downfall at the end of the play. The play suggests the acceptability of holding the monarch to account in a manner which is in keeping with contemporary concerns about the nature of William’s rule and interest in the possibility of resistance. Xerxes thus dramatises the necessity of rebellion under tyranny as it considers the inevitable demise of the restored dynasty. Like other plays of the 1690s, it recognises ‘the problem of conceiving a political community no longer grounded in conventional moral authority’.76

Conclusion Cambyses, Alexander, Darius and Xerxes: four Persian kings on the Restoration stage, all of whom claim divine sanction for their rule and all of whom are ultimately overthrown. Like Cambyses and The Rival Queens, Darius and Xerxes ask what happens when an apparently divinely ordained monarch fails to perform his duties adequately. In answering this question, they consider what constitutes tyranny, and how power is wielded and handed on by such a king. They examine the effects of tyrannical kingship on the citizenry, including the prospect of rebellion and its legitimacy. In the case of Darius and Xerxes, as this chapter has shown, the political conditions of the late 1680s and late 1690s mean that these issues were especially pertinent at the time when Crowne and Cibber were writing, but they were concerns that reverberated throughout the years following 1660, the inheritance of the political and social unrest of the civil wars and interregnum. As Chua has argued, Restoration culture was ‘anxiously preoccupied with the fragile foundations of government’. Plots which centred on tyranny, usurpation, restoration and rebellion were ‘a means of helping the kingdom make sense of and come to terms with its recent political history’.77 Given the influence of the civil wars years on Restoration culture, and the fear of ‘being thrown again into the maelstrom of such a war’, it is not surprising that the drama of the

76 Chua, Ravishment of Reason, p. 132, where Chua identifies this as an interest of John Dryden’s Don Sebastian, King of Portugal (1690). 77 Chua, Ravishment of Reason, p. 2. See also Nancy Maguire, Regicide and Restoration: English Tragicomedy, 1660–1671 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

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period occupied itself with the prospect of failed kingship and consequent political upheaval.78 Early modern English plays which centre on Achaemenid kings constitute ‘clear evidence of a continuing interest in the early Persian Empire’.79 Loloi suggests that this may be due to the fact that in the years when the English were pursuing their own desires to build a great empire, their playwrights ‘often have found in an earlier empire important and attractive, though often prejudiced, materials for presentation on the stage’.80 While the function of Persia as a model of empire is clearly present, this chapter has shown that Achaemenid Persia was also particularly useful to dramatists interested in exploring questions relating to domestic kingship. Achaemenid Persia was convenient for exploring these questions due to its ready associations with tyranny, luxury, effeminacy and the difficulty of peaceful succession, all associations that found parallels in English domestic politics. The period of the Achaemenid empire which is covered by Crowne and Cibber constituted its decline; by the end of Xerxes’ rule, ‘it had already passed its peak and was never to attain the glory that its founders had brought to it’. Alexander’s victory led to the fall of the Achaemenids, and ‘[t]hus the mighty Persian empire crumbled even more swiftly than it had been built’.81 Other than the possible parallels between dynasties in decline, it is difficult to argue that either Crowne or Cibber was much interested in the question of empire in their plays of Persia. Dramatists writing plays of Persia in the Restoration period may have looked to a foreign and historical empire for their inspiration, but it was questions of domestic politics that were played out on stage.

78 Susan Staves, Players’ Scepters: Fictions of Authority in the Restoration (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), p. 1. 79 Loloi, ‘Portraits of the Achaemenid Kings’, p. 39. 80 Loloi, ‘Portraits of the Achaemenid Kings’, p. 39. 81 Katouzian, The Persians, p. 35.

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Index

A Abb¯as I as a father, 122 cruelty of, 140, 141, 170 friendship with Sherley brothers, 109, 115, 123 good governance of, 141 rumoured conversion of, 123 tyranny of, 128 Abbot, George, 16, 18 Academic drama, 146, 149 Aeschylus, 7, 144, 145 The Persians , 144 Africa, 82 Alexander the Great, 154 Alexander legends, 206 as ideal king, 211 femininity of, 215, 216, 220 madness of, 207, 212 masculinity of, 25, 214, 215, 220, 236, 242 Persian identity of, 25, 204, 220, 224, 229, 245

relationship with Hephestion, 219 tyranny of, 25, 204, 209, 210, 212 Alexander, William’s Monarchick Tragedies , 108, 109 America, 235 Anglo-Ottoman trade agreements, 86 Anonymous Godly Queene Hester, 28, 33 Haman/Aman, 29, 36 The History of Jacob and Esau, 33 Mordechai, 28–30, 37 Vashti, 28, 37 Anonymous, Kyng Daryus , 51, 52 Zorobabell, 59, 60, 62 Antichrist, 121 Archbishop Laud, 142 Arrian, 209 Arsamnes, 142, 144–152, 155, 157 Artabanus, 161, 162 Asia, 6, 7, 9, 12, 15 Atossa, 144–146, 148, 151–153

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 C. Houston, Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699, New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22618-2

289

290

INDEX

B Babylon, 3, 7 Balbi, Hieronymo de, 1 Barker, William, 6 Baron, Robert, 161, 164, 165, 173–175, 178 Mirza, 161, 164, 165, 174, 175 Beg, Husayn’ Ali, 134 Behn, Aphra, 232 Bevington, David, 52, 53 The Bible Apocalypse, 28 Book of Daniel, 62, 83 Book of Ezekiel, 59 Book of Haggai, 58 Book of Zechariah, 58 Esther, 28, 30, 31, 35–37, 39, 41, 45 Geneva Bible, 60, 61 Numbers, 33 Old Testament, 27, 31, 32, 40 Biddulph, William, 16 Birchwood, Matthew, 186, 187, 189, 192, 193, 196–199 Botero, Giovanni, 14, 16 Brancetour, Robert, 1–4 Bushnell, Rebecca, 75 C Cambridge, 204 Cambyses II, 62, 64, 71 Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas, 42, 43 Cartwright, John, 16, 23 Cartwright, William, 135, 142, 144, 156 The Royall Slave, 23, 135, 144, 154 Cecil, William, 76 Censorship, 150 Charles I, 134, 142, 145, 149 personal rule of, 150, 152, 153 role of counsel in moderating his position, 168

Charles II, 182, 183, 185, 197, 199–201 sexual behaviour of, 197 Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor), 1, 3 Chivalry, 196 Christianity catholicism, 18, 20, 24, 25 protestantism, 18, 20 Chrysostom, Dio, 154, 155 Cibber, Colley, 204 Cicero, 209 Closet drama, 107, 108 Columbus, Christopher, 82 Constantinople, 124 Cotton, Dodmore, 116 Cotton embassy, 134, 140 Counsel and flattery, 55, 176 evil nature of, 168, 169, 172, 175, 177 role of in governance, 21, 23 Cratander, 142, 145–153, 155, 157 Croesus, 91 Cromwell, Thomas, 33 Crowne, John The Ambitious Statesman, 234 City Politiques , 235 Darius , 232–236 Curtain Theatre, 124 Cyrus, 88–94, 100 D Daniel, Samuel, 108, 111 The Tragedie of Philotas , 108, 111 Darius III, 203, 206 Davenant, William, 156 Denham, John, 161, 164, 166, 168, 174, 175 The Sophy, 161, 164, 166, 168, 174, 175 Dialogues of counsel, 56

INDEX

Dimmock, Matthew, 82, 85, 86, 95, 96, 98 Diplomacy, 134, 135 diplomatic fiction, 133, 135 Dryden, John, 186 Dudley, Robert, 46

E East India Company, 139 Edwards, Richard, 55 Damon and Pythias , 55, 57 Elizabeth I cult of, 93 Esther/Hester as figure of, 20 marriage prospects of, 55, 66 Privy Council of, 47 testimony to her excellence as a monarch, 21 Tilsbury speech, 46 Elyot, Thomas, 55, 57, 58 English Civil Wars, 160, 168, 169 Englishness, 134–136, 139, 141, 142, 146 Ephesus, 145, 147 Exclusion Crisis, 231

291

H Hackett, Thomas, 35, 45 Hakluyt, Richard, 82, 106 The Principall Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, 106 Harem, 28, 37 Henry VIII, 1, 4, 18 Herbert, Thomas, 14, 23 Herodotus, 5, 7, 8, 16, 20 Hester (Esther), 28–31, 33–35, 37–47, 49 as a figure of Elizabeth I, 45–47 Heylyn, Peter, 16, 17 Hobbes, Thomas, 77 Holland/Dutch, 170 Houses of Parliament, 162 House of Commons, 162 House of Lords, 162

F Farrant, Richard, 87–90, 92, 95, 103 The Warres of Cyrus , 87 France, 138

I Interregnum, 199, 201 The Irish Rebellion (1641), 166–168 Islam conversion, 24 relationship to Christianity, 18 sectarianism, 17 shi’ism, 17 sunnism, 17 Isocrates, 39 Italy, 239 Venice, 2

G Ghatta, Javad, 10 Gold, 81–83, 85, 91, 93–95, 97–99 Greenblatt, Stephen, 85 Greville, Fulke Alaham, 108 Grogan, Jane, 6, 8, 10, 19

J Jacobitism, 247 James II, 231–233, 235, 246, 249, 250 James VI and I, 6, 22 Jenkinson, Anthony, 48 Jerusalem, 27, 40 Jones, Inigo, 156

292

INDEX

Judaism Jewish identity, 29 Purim, 30 Justin, 209

K Katharine of Aragon, 20 Kingship absolute kingship, 12, 21, 66, 75, 95, 102, 135, 180, 229, 244 deconsecration of, 201 divine right of kings, 47 divinity of, 153 idealised nature of, 135 ideal philosopher-king, 147, 148 impostors, 187 king as imago dei, 160 regicide, 39 resistance theory, 161 rule by common consent, 162 succession of, 146 King Solomon representation of Henry VIII as, 42

L Lee, Nathaniel, 204, 205, 211, 225 The Rival Queens , 204, 205, 207, 211, 225 The tragedy of Nero, 207 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 251 Loloi, Parvin, 26 London, 82, 84, 95 Loomba, Ania, 9 Louis XIV, 185

M Macedon, 203, 208 MacLean, Gerald, 237 Male friendship and kingship, 63

eroticism of, 218, 219 idealization of, 57 Manwaring, George, 15, 16 Maria, Henrietta, 142, 152 Marlowe, Christopher as republican, 94, 95 Tamburlaine the Great Parts 1 and 2, 51 Marriage, 55, 66, 74 Masculinity association with sexual activity, 215 association with violence and martial prowess, 215 friendship, 219 Masood, Hafaz Abid, 4, 5, 10 Matar, Nabil, 237 Mazdaism, 125 McJannet, Linda, 10 Meshkat, Kurosh, 10 Middleton, Thomas, 84 Minadoi, Giovanni Tommaso, 16 Mirror-for-princes’ drama, 55 de casibus tradition, 64, 66, 70, 72 speculum principis , 51 Mithraism, 146 Morality play ‘hybrid’ morality play, 52 Morezin, Andrea (or Morosini), 2 Muhammad, 17 N Naqd ‘Al¯ı Beg, 134 Niayesh, Ladan, 10, 11, 106, 117 North-east passage, 105 Norton, Thomas and Sackville, Thomas Gorboduc, 55 O Olearius, Adam, 6, 238, 239 Orientalism, 7, 9, 13

INDEX

Ottoman Empire/Turkey, 114–116, 118, 123, 130

P Parr, Anthony, 12 Parry, William, 15, 16 Pausianias, 7 Persepolis, 83 Persia Achaemenid empire, 5, 6, 16 anti-Persian sentiments/attitudes, 27 as ‘king of kings’, 187 as an example to England, 23 as empire-builder, 26 as political model for England, 92 association with gold, 21 barbarity, 7 beauty of, 140 Cambyses II, 24, 62, 64, 71, 203 courtesy, 14 court of, 1, 3, 106, 125 Cyrus the Great (Cyrus II of Persia), 6, 24 Darius I, 28 Darius the Great (Darius I of Persia), 6 decadence, 7, 26 difference from Turks, 18 effeminacy of, 25, 26 empire of, 27, 28, 30 English travel writing to/about, 8, 109, 114, 115, 136, 170 European travel to, 34 exoticism of, 170, 221 feminisation of, 146 good governance of, 49 Hormuz/Ormuz, 3 hospitality of, 54, 127 Islamic, 34 Isma’il I, 17

293

kings of, 7, 28 luxury, 13, 25, 26 magi, 7, 17 material wealth, 26 medieval attitudes to, 34 military of, 86, 108, 123, 125, 128, 147, 238, 244 military strength of, 12 people of, 27 persian kingship, 47 Qazwin/Qazvin, 3 romance, 105–107, 129 Safavid dynasty, 5 Sassanid empire, 17 similarity to English royalty of, 48 tyranny of, 37 untrustworthiness of, 170 wealth of, 43 Xerxes I (Ahasuerus/Assuerus), 20 Persian clothing/costume, 220–222, 255 Persian practice of slave-kingship, 145 Persian practice of sun-worship, 145 Pinçon, Abel, 15, 16, 115 Plato, 14 Playing companies boys of the Chapel Royal, 87 Children of the Queen’s Revels, 111 D’Avenant, William’s company, 182 Earl of Leicester’s Men, 64 Queen Anne’s Men, 124 Plutarch, 208–211, 223 Polo, Marco, 84 Pope Clement VII, 4 Pope Clement VIII, 123 Preston, Thomas, 20, 52, 62, 64, 65 Cambises , 52, 62 Purchas, Samuel, 135, 136 Q Queen of Sheba, 40, 41

294

INDEX

as emblem of Catholic Church, 42 in relation to Hester, 34 Queenship, 41, 44–46 R Ralegh, Walter, 82 Red Bull theatre, 124 Reformation drama, 31, 33 female readership of, 33 political interests of, 32 Regicide, 139 Religious conversion, 186–189 The Renaissance, 7, 19 Restoration, 186, 187, 194, 199, 201 Royalism, 161, 163, 169, 173–175, 178–180 role of counsel in royalist thought, 168, 179, 180 Rufus, Quintus Curtius, 7, 209, 220, 221 Russia, 105 S Said, Edward, 9 Sardis, 144, 150, 153 Sasanian Empire, 206 Scott, Anne, 182–184 Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, 181 Scott, James as ‘Protestant Prince’, 183 Duke of Buccleuch and Monmouth, 183 Monmouth Rebellion, 183 Settle, Elkanah, 181, 182, 184, 187, 189, 193, 200–202 Severus, Alexander, 57 Shahs Persia Tahmasp I, 1 Shakespeare, William, 65 1 Henry IV , 65

Sherley, Anthony knighthood of, 15 propaganda surrounding, 125 texts about, 16 writings of, 15, 16 Sherley, Robert, 84, 86, 129, 134 Sherley, Thomas, 124, 125 Siculus, Diodorus, 83, 209 Silk trade, 169, 170 English trade in Persia, 169 Singh, Jyotsna G., 19 Southerne, Thomas, 233 Spain, 4, 9 Strabo, 7 Syria, 1, 190 Aleppo, 1, 2

T Tamburlaine and counsel, 92, 100, 101 avarice of, 99 friendships of, 101 identification with Persia, 97, 98 illness of, 100 tyranny of, 82, 100 Taverner, Richard, 62, 63, 70 Timur, 95, 96 Tragedy, 64, 65, 70, 71, 78 The Travailes of the Three English Brothers (1607) by Day, John, Rowley, William, and Wilkins, George, 107, 124 Travel writing, 7, 8, 12–14, 18, 21, 23 Tudor interludes, 54, 55 Tyndale, William, 31 Tyranny, 12, 13, 21, 25, 26

U University of Oxford, 135, 149

INDEX

V Villiers, George, 204 Duke of Buckingham, 204 W William and Mary, 247, 250 William of Orange, 232, 248 homosexuality of, 250 Wyatt, Thomas, 1, 3

X Xenophon, 5–7, 20, 83, 88, 92 Cyropaedia, 89, 90 Xerxes, 6, 26

Z Zoroastrianism, 16, 17

295