Research Article

Representations Of The Muslim Woman On The

Renaissance English Stage
Öz ÖKTEM 1

ABSTRACT
In this essay I discuss the evolving representation of Muslim women in English
Renaissance drama. Unlike later Orientalist narratives, early modern texts
portray Muslim women with complexity and nuance. I trace the development of
these representations from medieval literature, where Muslim women are often
depicted as assertive, noble figures, to early modern plays that reflect England’s
emerging political and economic relations with the Ottoman Empire. I argue that
while Muslim women in Renaissance drama embody the wealth and power of
the Islamic world, they are also shaped by patriarchal and religious anxieties. By
examining key plays, I aim to shed light on how these depictions both challenged
and reinforced Western ideologies of gender, power, and cultural difference.

Keywords: Muslim women, Renaissance drama, Anglo-Ottoman relations,

Tamburlaine

Rönesans İngiliz Tiyatrosunda Müslüman Kadın Temsilleri

ÖZ
Bu çalışmada İngiliz Rönesans tiyatrosunda Müslüman kadın temsilinin geçirdiği
değişimi tartışıyorum. Yakın dönemde ortaya çıkan Oryantalist anlatıların
aksine, erken modern dönem metinlerinde Müslüman kadın imgesi karmaşık
ve ince ayrımlara sahiptir. Bu temsillerin gelişimini Müslüman kadınları iddialı
ve asil figürler olarak betimleyen orta çağ edebiyatından, İngiltere’nin Osmanlı
İmparatorluğu’yla bu dönemde başlayan politik ve ekonomik ilişkilerinin
yansıması olan erken modern dönem oyunlarına kadar izliyorum. Rönesans
oyunlarındaki Müslüman kadınların İslam dünyasının zenginliğini ve gücünü
temsil etmelerinin yanı sıra ataerkil ve dini endişelere göre de şekil aldıklarını
iddia ediyorum. Dönemin önemli birkaç oyununu kısaca inceleyerek bu
temsillerin Batı’nın cinsiyet, iktidar ve kültürel farklılık ideolojilerine nasıl hem
meydan okuyup hem destek verdiği konusuna ışık yakmayı amaçlıyorum.

Keywords: Müslüman kadınlar, Rönesans tiyatrosu, İngiliz-Osmanlı ilişkileri,

Tamburlaine.

Istanbul Aydin University, Istanbul, [email protected] https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1222-5229

1

International Journal of Media, Culture and Literature Volume 10 Issue 2 - December 2024 (133 - 144) 133
Representations of The Muslim Woman on The Renaissance English Stage

INTRODUCTION
The contemporary Western discourse has a quite clear-cut representation for
Islamic women: they are the veiled and segregated victims of a society which is
oppressive to women in nature, and this oppression constitutes the fundamental
grounds to justify the backwardness in Islamic societies (Kahf, 1999). However,
until West eventually came up with this narrative in the eighteenth century, the
image of the Muslim woman had undergone a series of transformations throughout
history. Her representation has been an evolving phenomenon, whose elements
are the products of specific historical moments and cultural developments; and in
this evolution, Western definitions for the self and the Other, as well as for gender
have played an important role.

Understanding the process that the image of the Muslim woman went through
in Western literature requires an interdisciplinary approach that combines
the ideological and historical discourse of the West against Islam as a rival
power with European patriarchal constructions against woman as the opposite
sex. The general effort given today in the academic circles is to counter the
misrepresentations of Muslim women as distorted through the perspective of
Orientalism in the period following the eighteenth century. In this paper I focus
on relatively an untouched era, the early modern age, and survey the image of
the Islamic women in a number of English stage productions. Considering it as a
period in which the Western structures of self-identity and gender in the modern
sense were initially formed, the Renaissance age provides a suitable medium to
trace the formation of the contemporary images of Muslim women in the Western
world. Moreover, inhabiting both the remnants of the medieval past and the roots
of European colonialism, this era is a useful ground to analyze this process from
a comparative perspective.
In today’s Western outlook Islamic women are represented as secluded and
victimized female figures which are irreconcilable with modern societies and
the predominant academic model for readings of such representations has been
Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism. The relationship between the discursive
knowledge and hegemonic power is the starting point of this theory and, as Said
suggests, Orientalism is “a discourse created from the relationship of Western
power over the Orient into the Western knowledge about the Orient” (Said, 1978,
p.7). The construction of this narrative dates back to early ages of history, Said
notes, though, as a discipline, Orientalism began after the middle of the eighteenth
century (Said, 1978). However, as recent studies in history as well as in literature
have shown, “the power relations implied in Orientalism are unsustainable”
within the historical and political context before the eighteenth century; simply
because the prerequisites needed to impose an imperial assurance over the East
were not provided (Dimmock, 2016, p.17). From the medieval period until the
end of the early modern era, the Islamic world in the East first rivaled, then,
superseded Christian Europe in terms of military and economic strength. Thus,
the Europeans had to postpone their colonial project until the eighteenth century,

134
 Öz ÖKTEM

when the events and conditions provided the material conditions for Orientalist
discourse. When the world’s power balances between the twelfth century and the
end of the seventeenth century are considered, the Orientalist theory should be
reformulated as “a discourse produced by the vulnerable, overshadowed Western
world about the politically, militarily, economically and culturally stronger East”
(Vitkus, 2000, p.4). Such a reformulation unavoidably has certain implications on
the representations of the Muslim woman.
MUSLIM WOMEN IN MEDIEVAL TEXTS
Colonial narratives are loaded with images of Islamic women as innately
oppressed, veiled, secluded and silenced figures, whereas Muslim women in
medieval texts are completely free from this narrative. In medieval European
literature the Muslim woman is pictured as an overbearing noblewoman, who,
after falling in love with the Christian prisoner of her father, converts to his
faith and leaves her country. She initiates much of the action and aggressively
pursue her Christian lover. This character type, referred to by Mohja Kahf as the
“enamored Muslim princess,” holds high status and power in her own land but
abandons it to assume a lower-rank and a less powerful role when she marries the
Christian hero (2002, p.37). In medieval texts, Muslim women are not portrayed
as objects of male pleasure, restricted by the prohibitions of a strict religion, as
representations of the eighteenth-century would suggest. On the contrary, with
their bold and assertive qualities, Muslim women in medieval texts present a
subtle challenge to the Christian-patriarchal ideology. Their conversion does not
simply imply a change in religion but also the containment of these qualities by
forcing them into a Christian passive femininity.

Since the European ideology in Middle Ages was not in a position to delimit and
distance Islam, as it did in the colonial period, these texts do not produce entirely
different, inferior, exotic figures of Islamic people. Muslim women in medieval
texts do not renounce their religion because Christians are more powerful, they
simply see the innate truth of the Christianity, and become part of the European
society. The Islamic characteristics attained to them suddenly disappear as if they
had never been Muslim before. Instead of differentiating or othering, these texts
normalize these women. Though there is certainly an appeal for a universal order
under the leadership of Christendom, medieval Europe obviously did not yet
assume a domination or cultural superiority over the Islamic world in the East.

Bramimonde in La Chanson de Roland (commonly dated around 1100) is one

of the earliest representations of the Muslim woman in European texts. The
poem portrays Bramimonde as a typical wanton queen, whose assertive Muslim
qualities are curbed into Christian feminine modesty through religious conversion.
Bramimonde inaugurates the stock Muslim female character that populates
medieval romances and should be seen as a product of two developments in
Western: the notion of Christian unity that began to take hold in Europe and the
realization that Islam was becoming a growing threat to Christendom which led a
hostile awareness against the Islamic world.
International Journal of Media, Culture and Literature Volume 10 Issue 2 - December 2024 (133 - 144) 135
Representations of The Muslim Woman on The Renaissance English Stage

In the transformation of this new consciousness into a well-established narrative

the Crusades played a significant role. The First Crusade was launched in 1095
by Otto the Great with the aim to recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Lands from
the Muslims, and to respond to the Byzantine emperor’s call for help against
the Seljuk Turks who were expanding into Anatolia. Though the Crusades were
overall a political and economic failure, the attacks continued until the thirteenth
century, and within this period the crusading emotion contributed to build the
image of Islam and Islamic people as the principal threat to the Christian world.
It would not be wrong to claim that if there is a unique European worldview
or sense of identity that distinguishes Europeans from non-Europeans, it began
to take shape and solidify in opposition to Islamic civilization. Starting around
the early twelfth century, Islam took on a specifically negative connotation in
Western narratives.

MUSLIM WOMEN IN EARLY MODERN TEXTS

With the beginning of European explorations and the decline of the religious
ideological unity in Christendom that followed the Reformation modern nation-
states started to be developed in Europe. The economic and political realities of
the early modern era were not suitable for medieval projects like the Crusades. The
competition between the new nation-states was growing and mercantilism became
a major economic practice in which European merchants and privateers were
seeking huge profits in the recently discovered America and the Mediterranean.
While the Europeans’ contact with the indigenous peoples of recently discovered
lands of America and Australia might have given them a sense of superiority,
increasing commercial and political relations with the Islamic world in the Old
World certainly could not yet do so. This was the age when the distribution of
power over the globe started to shape. There was political and religious rivalry
among European nations, and none of them had the economic and military
superiority to challenge the powers of the Muslim countries. Moreover, trade with
the East was inevitable and this led an increase and variation in the economic and
cultural trafficking with Islamic countries (Burton, 2005).

For Europe the most challenging Islamic power was the Ottoman Empire.
From the fourteenth century onwards, Turks became a major threat first to the
Byzantine Empire, and then to the entire Europe, as they captured Constantinople
in 1453 and almost took Vienna in 1529, keeping the city under a long siege.
During the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent (1495-1566), Turks possessed
one thirds of the known world, including the Christian holy lands. For many
Christian moralists they were “the scourge of God” sent to punish the weak and
divided Christendom. Though the Ottomans received a defeat at Lepanto in
1571, their retreat proved only temporary, as two years later they took Cyprus,
which was a very strategic island on the Mediterranean trade route, and in 1578
in the Battle of Alcazar, Ottoman viceroy Abdul-Malek triumphed against troops
from all over Europe. The Ottomans remained a leading world power until the
Treaty of Karlowitz (1699), which forced them to relinquish large territories in

136
 Öz ÖKTEM

eastern Europe including Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia and lose their dominant
position in this part of the world. Nevertheless, in the early phase of European
expansion, the West was forced to recognize the sovereignty and unity of the
Islamic world. Rather than a confrontation, Christian princes were forced to make
trade agreements and mutual defense pacts with the Ottomans (Chew, 1937).

England in the early modern age was an isolated nation at the edges of mercantilist
Europe and was in need of a strong ally in its political and religious rivalry with
Catholic Spain. Despite the longstanding crusader rhetoric that dominated the
Christian outlook, the Turkish Empire appeared as a suitable strategic partner for
England. At this point in history England was far from the powerful commercial
and military empire that it later become and in order to develop a competitive
edge “trade with Islamic countries was essential” (Matar, 1998, p. 10). Moreover,
the anti-idolatrous sentiment which was common in Protestantism and Islam
enabled the construction of an ideologically justified rapprochement between
England and the Ottoman Empire (Burton, 2005). Queen Elizabeth I was the
first English ruler to openly collaborate with the Turks. She granted liberty to
her subjects to trade with Muslims, and what started as a merchant initiative in
1578 became an established policy by the end of the century. In 1580, Sultan
Murad III granted England its initial capitulations, and the following year, the
English founded the Levant Company, which ensured the protection of English
merchants and privateers conducting trade in Ottoman territories. In fact, there
was such a strong amity between the Queen and the Sultan that the Scottish king
James VI was informed that “no Christian prince ever had in the Turk such a
great estimation” (MacLean and Matar, 2011, p. 54). While many Englishmen
maintained the conventional hostility against Islam, many others regarded the
Ottoman Empire as “the greatest and best compacted that the sunne ever saw”
(MacLean and Matar, 2011, p.147). They associated the Ottomans with immense
wealth and luxury and perceived the Turkish lands as domains of desire and
opportunity.

Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine (1587-1590) appeared in this historical

context. In line with the Renaissance humanistic discourse, this play is generally
considered as a celebration of man’s ambition to rise to sublime heights. Despite
being a Muslim, Tamburlaine is interpreted by many scholars as a model for
the European imperialist, who is at the gateway to victory straining against the
traditional limits on thought, including those of religion. In addition, in the play
almost all major characters are Muslim and traces of medieval conventions that
represent the Muslim as the infidel enemy are virtually invisible. I claim that this
lack of discrimination towards the Muslims is linked to the realpolitik of the age
and Marlowe’s text’s is a reflection of the West’s pragmatic approach towards the
Islamic East.

As is well known, the two-part play is centered on Tamburlaine’s opposition

against the Turks and the first part depicts the events of the Battle of Ankara of
1402 in which the historical Timur first defeated then captured Ottoman Sultan
International Journal of Media, Culture and Literature Volume 10 Issue 2 - December 2024 (133 - 144) 137
Representations of The Muslim Woman on The Renaissance English Stage

Bayezid I. The play’s critics often see the character Bajazeth as a stereotypical
pompous and warlike Turkish sultan, whose complete defeat and humiliation is an
act of divine providence. However, recent scholars who analyze the play within
the context of the developing Anglo-Ottoman relations argue that Marlowe uses
these stereotypes as a front. At first, Bajazeth is depicted as a blustering Islamic
sultan threatening Christendom, but as the play progresses, Tamburlaine’s
cruelty, arrogance, and blasphemy cause the audience to reconsider his actions
and sympathize with his Turkish victims. By portraying Bajazeth as a dignified
emperor enduring the brutality of a merciless foe, rather than a barbarian deserving
retribution for opposing Christians, the play challenges religious animosity. In
this way, it subtly builds a narrative that could legitimize England’s contentious
alliance with the Turks (Burton, 2005).

The Muslim woman within this picture is not represented as a function of

religious or civilizational difference. She is simply portrayed as a woman who
is restrained by her traditional feminine role. Zenocrate, Zabina, the virgins of
Damascus, and the Turkish captain’s wife Olympia are not discriminated with
the complex combination of their Islamic identity and female gender. Their
portrayals lack the sexual overtones often linked with Islamic femininity. Also,
there is not any narrative strategy in the play that combines Christian-Muslim
relations with heterosexual romance between characters of enemy religions.
The Muslim woman is not presented as an object of European men’s desire for
conquest or possession. Rather, she is depicted as a formidable Eastern empress,
complementing the grandiose of her male counterpart. She is proudful and uses
assertive language when she needs to. Although she is articulate and exercises
varying degrees of imperial authority, these qualities do not render her a danger
to the patriarchal social order. At this early stage of Anglo-Ottoman interactions,
the distinctions between Christian and Muslim women are not clear. Both are
depicted with similar attributes and roles in the empire-building game, which is
controlled by universal patriarchal norms.

The idea that Tamburlaine is indifferent to a division between Christian and

Muslim women is supported by the fact that the play’s feminist critics rarely
identify Zenocrate and Zabina as Muslim. Instead of noting any Christian-Muslim
separation, they mostly interpret these women as typical representations of
contemporary gender norms, fulfilling their designated roles as objects within the
play’s imperialist scheme. For instance, Charles Brooks suggests that “beautiful
women are treasures to be won” by the men in Tamburlaine, and by acting
nobly and virtuously, women can achieve “the highest prize possible” (Brooks,
1957, p.3). Similarly, Simon Shepherd views the women in Tamburlaine not as
individual characters, but as means to highlight male virtue, arguing that in the
play “women are treated as a treasure in a world where men fight and negotiate”
(Shepherd, 1986, p.179). Like their Christian counterparts, Muslim women in
Tamburlaine are trophies and accessories to men in their “glorious enterprise,”
which was lifted by the Renaissance ideology and in which the Europeans were

138
 Öz ÖKTEM

more in a position to admire and envy the Muslims than overpowering them.
Marlowe’s Islamic female characters disrupt the pattern of representing Muslim
women with emphasis on passion, assertiveness, lust, and moral corruption as
indicators of their supposed false religion. The play does not differentiate Muslim
women as embodiments of negative femininity compared to idealized Christian
women. Instead, both Zenocrate and Zabina are presented positively: they are
noble and virtuous Eastern empresses who elevate their husbands’ imperial status
and gain respect through their deeds.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Mediterranean was a region

of rapidly shifting international alliances and constant territorial changes.
Commercial agreements and mutual defense treaties formed between Christians
and Muslims. Piracy was widespread, with multi-ethnic crews battling each other
and preying on the vulnerable. Turkish privateers dominated the trade routes,
posing a threat to Europe’s expanding sea markets. Many Christian sailors
converted to Islam, or “took the turban,” to gain the freedom and protection
offered by Barbary ports and North Africa. Despite church sermons and royal
proclamations, Christian sailors and soldiers were increasingly “turning Turk,”
becoming renegade pirates or joining the Ottoman army. The growing number of
English seamen under Ottoman influence in the Mediterranean, coupled with the
issue of religious conversions, became a source of great concern after 1603, when
James I succeeded to the English throne (Senior, 1976).

With the turn of the seventeenth century, rising anxieties against the Islamic
wealth and power produced seriously distorted representations of Islam in the
popular culture. The threat and fear that the Ottoman Empire imposed upon the
Christian world led demonized images of the Islam in the name of anti-Islamic
propaganda. Christian moralists argued that the appeal of converting to Islam
was largely due to the increased sexual freedom permitted under Islamic rule
(Burton, 2005). The Muslim prophet was seen as a blasphemer and a heretic that
seduced people, while his religion advocating aggressive violence and sexual
excessiveness. Muslim sultans were depicted as oppressive rulers that exercised
tyrannical authority over their subjects. Lust, suspicion, murderous conspiracy,
sudden cruelty and vengeance were their stereotypical characteristics. The
demonization of Islam in these texts focused on the devastating and pervasive
power of this culture.

As seen in the example of Tamburlaine, the Renaissance humanist discursive

approach displays a genuine indiscriminate approach in representing Muslim
and Christian women. However, the efforts to demonize the Islamic culture
in the seventeenth century revives the negative image of the Muslim woman
which clearly contributes to her depiction in later colonial literature. Western
patriarchal discourse has always contrasted the “good” woman who embodies the
idealized version of femininity and the “bad” woman who represents everything
deemed unfeminine. Many Muslim female characters in early modern English

International Journal of Media, Culture and Literature Volume 10 Issue 2 - December 2024 (133 - 144) 139
Representations of The Muslim Woman on The Renaissance English Stage

drama, including Lancelot’s whorish Moor in The Merchant of Venice or the

witch Sycorax in The Tempest, are represented as the embodiments of this “bad”
woman. These representations enmesh the racist rhetoric with a sexist discourse.
The idea that Islam is a sexually licentious religion and the notion that women
in general always pose sexual danger, bring about misogynistic images for the
Muslim woman on the Renaissance stage. We should also add that the concept
of harem or “seraglio” enters into the European lexicon for the first time in this
period, producing an exaggerated image as a site of hidden sin designed for
sexual indulgence.

In a number of seventeenth century plays including Robert Dawborne’s A

Christian Turned Turk (1612), John Fletcher’s The Knight of Malta (1619) and
The Island Princess (1621), and Philip Massinger’s Renegado (1623), conversion
to Islam is portrayed as a direct consequence of an inter-religious heterosexual
desire. In these representations Muslim women are depicted mostly as lustful and
wanton women who hide behind the veil of chastity. They evoke open sexuality
and female assertiveness, aggressively pursuing their Christian lovers to bring
on their conversion and ruin in the end. Voada in A Christian Turned Turk is
a typical example of this negative model. She is a beautiful but evil Muslim
temptress, alluring Ward, the Christian private, to undergo the conversion rite to
win her love. In order to show the consequences of apostasy, Daborne punishes
his protagonist Ward with a tragic end. After the treachery of his Muslim beloved
and the loss of his ship and men, the Christian hero commits suicide on the stage,
cursing the Ottomans and warning the potential renegades against the evils of
Islam. However, as Nabil Matar points out, this is Daborne’s “wishful thinking,”
as the ending of the play is purely fictional (1993, p. 499). At the time the play
was acted on the London theatres, the actual Ward was living in prosperity in
the Muslim lands and kept on his piratical operations until old age. Daborne’s
story is important in respect that it “shows the apprehension which prevailed in
the English imagination about the practice of Christians converting to Islam and
continuing to prosper” (Matar, 1993, p. 485).

Donusa, the Ottoman princess in The Renegado is another example of the willful
Islamic temptress type. She falls in love with the Venetian gentleman Vitelli,
who has come to Tunis to save his abducted sister, and seduces him with her
power, beauty, and wealth. However, when Donusa tries to convert Vitelli,
unlike Ward who in Daborne’s play almost immediately gives into the allures
of the Muslim woman, the Christian hero exhibits strong resilience. Despite the
threat of death in the hands of the Turks, he not only denounces Islam and resists
conversion, but also enables Donusa to convert to his faith and elope with him
back to Venice. In this respect Donusa can be seen as a true descendant of the
medieval representations of the enamored Muslim princess, who is essentially
good, yet corrupted due to her false religion. She is a convertible pagan who can
be assimilated to become a part of the European world.

140
 Öz ÖKTEM

Similarly, in The Island Princess, the attention of the play is focused on Quisara,
princess of Tidore, who is wooed not only by native suitors, including the
villainous Governor of Ternata, but also by two Portuguese adventurers, Ruy Dias
and Armusia. Quisara is a powerful and a subtle princess, who is able to play men
against one another to achieve her ends. Offering her love in return, she demands
her suitors to free her brother, a trope that recalls the heroic action as proof of
desire and worth, found in medieval romances. Quisara’s desirability is underlined
many times in the text, as she is a metaphor for the riches and the beauties of
her land in a manner familiar in colonial representations. Still, conversion threat
posed on the Christian hero, a theme absent in Oriental narratives, dominates the
play. While both Portuguese suitors try to convert Quisara into a Christian, they
themselves face the threat of conversion as a result of the conspiracies of the
evil Governor. Like the earlier two plays mentioned, The Island Princess evokes
the perils awaiting the European adventurers who may succumb to the seductive
powers of exotic lands and their women. Once again resistance to the threat of
apostasy is shown to be the key in winning the heart and the soul of the Muslim
woman, whose voluntary conversion marks Christianity’s definitive victory.

Early modern dramatic works also feature completely evil Muslim female
characters who relentlessly strive to dismantle Christianity. Philippa in Thomas
Rawlins’ Rebellion (1639) exemplifies this negative stereotype of the Muslim
woman to the edge. In the play, Rawlins does not depict General Raymond
as the typical black Machiavellian villain. He is neither especially cruel nor
particularly cunning. Instead, these traits are assigned to his formidable wife,
Philippa. She matches her husband in military skill and political resolve, with
more lines than Raymond and taking revenge by killing both his murderer and
her white counterpart. Philippa stands out as a compelling character, offering a
rare portrayal of a black Lady Macbeth figure, spurring her husband’s ambition.

Zanthia in The Knight of Malta is another representative of vigorous Islamic

femininity who militantly attempts to destroy Christianity. Serving the virtuous
lady Oriana, this black Moorish woman is the assistant to the play’s villain
Mountferrat. Yet, with her aggressive sexuality and murderous designs, she
embodies the ultimate evil force in the play. Zanthia’s blackness is the mark of
her inconvertibility to a Christian bride. Aware of the fact that she is not valued in
the play’s sexual economy Zanthia aims for the destruction of the entire Christian
community on the island of Malta. Zanthia’s blackness and evil are set against
the whiteness and virtue of another Muslim woman, Lucinda, the Turkish virgin
of noble origin whom the knights of Malta have captured in the recent Ottoman
siege. Lucinda is pure, beautiful and passive and upholds the established values
with respect to both Christian/Muslim and male/female hierarchies. Lucinda
inaugurates the prototype of the Muslim damsels of the later ages, who are loved,
honored and rescued by romantic Christian heroes.

The image of the Muslim woman in early modern plays should be seen also
in relation to the actual conditions of the women in the English society. The
International Journal of Media, Culture and Literature Volume 10 Issue 2 - December 2024 (133 - 144) 141
Representations of The Muslim Woman on The Renaissance English Stage

process of secularization that resulted from the Reformation and the counter-
Reformation, humanism, the emergence of the middle class with its new sexual
division of labor, and the new definitions of individualism and domesticity led to
significant changes in the position of women. Many women clearly stepped out
of their traditionally restricted spheres and contributed to the English society both
economically and culturally, and this partial liberation was frequently seen to be
threatening by men. The patriarchal system was resistant to granting women any
form of independence. Instead, to maintain prevailing gender hierarchies, women
were constantly reminded of their subordinate status and expected to submit to
male authority.2

Liberty of women reveals to be an important question that is raised up in the early

modern plays and Muslim female characters appear to be functional in overcoming
the challenge posed by actual women to English masculinity. Islamic women in
these plays not only do epitomize all that is unfeminine and unnatural, with the
restraint of freedom that they are subjected to, they embody a telling contrast to
the assumed privileges of the English women. Though they are portrayed as evil
and sexually assertive, Muslim women are shown to be subservient to Muslim
male authority and to its severe and unrelenting oppression, which almost
enslaves them within harems. Donusa in The Renegado, for instance, is depicted
as a harem woman and covers her face with a veil when she is outside the palace
walls. In a conversation with eunuch Carazie, who was born in England, Donusa
enquires about the treatment of women in the English society and is appalled
by their audacious and liberal behaviors as described by her servant. Thus, the
portrayal of the Muslim woman as helpless in the face of male tyranny not only
reinforces the perceived backwardness of Islamic culture, but also serves as a
reminder to Christian women of the relative freedom they enjoyed, tempering
their desire for greater rights. The figure of the Muslim woman serves as highly
adaptable dramatic material for early modern English playwrights, offering them
a platform to explore their anxieties about both the Islamic empire abroad and
Christian women at home. By merging these two seemingly distinct threats
into the portrayal of the Muslim woman, playwrights effectively diminish the
unsettling aspects of each for their English audiences.

CONCLUSION
Bold pagan princesses of the medieval legacy, lustful and wanton temptresses of
the Ottoman world, helpless damsels enslaved in harems: the representations of the
Muslim women varied in Renaissance English drama. In contrast to the portrayal
of Muslim women in colonial literature, where they symbolize inferiority, the
Islamic femininity in these texts reflects the superior power of Islamic civilization.

2
For the position of the Englishwomen in early modern age see: Alice Clark, Working Life of Women in the
Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge, 2006); Kate Aughterson, Renaissance Woman: A Sourcebook:
Constructions of Femininity in England, (London and New York: Routledge, 1995); Retha M. Warnicke, Women
of the English Renaissance and Reformation, (London: Greenwood Press, 1983); Elaine Beilin, Redeeming Eve:
Women Writers of the English Renaissance (1987).

142
 Öz ÖKTEM

Muslim female characters in the period’s drama are portrayed as enticing and
wealthy, however unlike their colonial counterparts, they do not represent the
availability of their lands. Instead, they embody the Islamic might as well as the
religious and military threat that the Ottoman Empire posed to Europe in the
early modern age. Muslim women in late Elizabethan plays are often depicted as
noble and queenly companions to powerful Eastern rulers. This portrayal can be
associated with the growing alliance between England and the Ottoman Empire,
which led to more flexible ideologies regarding Islam. However, the resurgence
of the sexually charged representations of the Muslim woman at the turn of the
seventeenth century should be understood in the context of increased Muslim-
Christian interactions in the Mediterranean, and the perceived threat to Christian
identity due to the increasing numbers of Christian renegades who converted to
Islam.

These contradicting portrayals which oscillate between admiration and

demonization, emphasize the complexities of early modern English attitudes
toward Islam. Muslim women on the Renaissance stage served as vehicles for
negotiating anxieties about power, gender, and identity on both domestic and
international levels. By representing Islamic women as embodiments of both allure
and threat, these plays reflect a Europe grappling with its place in an increasingly
interconnected and competitive world. The foregoing analysis with respect to
Islamic femininity reveals how gendered images were used to articulate fears
of cultural dissolution while simultaneously imagining new, pragmatic alliances.
Thus, the representation of Muslim women in Renaissance drama not only
provides insight into the history of Anglo-Islamic relations but also emphasizes
the persistent interaction of power, gender, and cultural difference in forming
narratives about the “Other.”

International Journal of Media, Culture and Literature Volume 10 Issue 2 - December 2024 (133 - 144) 143
Representations of The Muslim Woman on The Renaissance English Stage

REFERENCES
Brooks, C. (1957). Tamburlaine and Attitudes Toward Women. ELH 24(1), 1-11.
Burton, J. (2005). Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama 1579 – 1624.
Newark: University of Delaware Press.
Chew, S. (1937) The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England During the
Renaissance. Oxford: Clanderon.
Dimmock, M. (2016). New Turkes: Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early
Modern England. New York: Routledge.
Kahf, M. (1999). Western Representations of the Muslim Woman. Texas:
University of Texas Press.
MacLean G. M. and Matar, N. (2011) Britain and the Islamic World, 1558-1713.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Matar, N. (1998) Islam in Britain, 1558 - 1685. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Matar, N. (1993). The Renegade in English Seventeenth Century Imagination.
Studies in Literature (Rice), 33(3), 489-516.
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Vintage.
Senior, C. M. (1976). A Nation of Pirates: English Piracy in Its Heyday. New
York: Crane Russack.
Shepherd, S. (1986) Marlowe and the Politics of Elizabethan Theatre, Brighton:
Harvester Press.
Vitkus, D. (2000). The Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England. New York:
Columbia University Press.

144