Shakespeare's Turks and the spectre of ambivalence in the History Plays

Critical interest in Shakespeare's depiction of race and ethnicity has usually been confined to exploring his Moorish characters, contextualised by historical accounts of Anglo-Islamic relations focused on Morocco. This paper offers a different approach based on the fashion for Turk plays which defined the Elizabethan playhouses in the 1590s. It asks why Shakespeare did not put a Turk on his stage, and explores instead the ghostly presence of this figure in his History Plays. Starting with the reference to Mohammad in Henry VI Part 1, it examines the recurring motif of the Turk as it appears throughout the Henriad, culminating in the ambivalent depiction of Henry V as simultaneously a virtuous Christian prince and scheming, Machiavellian tyrant who threatens to ‘turn Turk’. Tracing the spectre of the Turk back through a range of humanist and Reformation texts including those by Erasmus, this article argues that Shakespeare draws on the ambivalent spectre of the Turk as a particularly satisfying and enjoyable theatrical fantasy, which throws new light on Othello

Aesthetics · Ambivalence · Art · Art history · Depiction · Erasmus · Humanism · Literature · The Renaissance · Theology · History · Islamic Studies and History · Philosophy