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The Barbarous Moor in Peele’s Alcazar (1594)
Fahd Mohammed Taleb Al-Olaqi
1,*
1
Department of English & Translation, University of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia
*Correspondence: University of Jeddah, Jeddah. Faculty of Science & Arts – Khulais, P.O. B. 355, Khulais 21921,
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. E-mail: falolaqi@uj.edu.sa
Received: April 10, 2016 Accepted: June 22, 2016 Online Published: June 24, 2016
doi:10.5430/wjel.v6n2p24 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5430/wjel.v6n2p24
Abstract
The article investigates the sixteenth century Elizabethan view of race and its influence on person’s innate character
within the context of The Battle of Alcazar. The interest of Elizabethan audience in Moorish matter is remarkable in
drama. The Elizabethans consider the Africa as the domain of war, conquest, fratricide, lust and treachery. The
Moors are often portrayed as violent villains that violate human morality. George Peele has overturned the racist
stereotypes of his days in presenting Muly Mahamet, as Machiavellian politician, in the play. Peele’s
characterization of this Moorish Other embodies negative traits shared by the society at large, such as violence
evilness, and treachery. Certainly, Muly Mahamet’s depiction is the patchwork of Peele uniting his audience’s views
and his own literary license to generate the complex villain of Barbary. He represents the first black Moor of any
dramatic significance. Peele shows the villain Muly Mahamet as cruel and treacherous, and his evil is accompanying
directly with the blackness of his skin. The representation of the immorality of the Moor puts into the European
superiority.
Keywords: Muly Mahamet; the Moor; Negro; the bad other; revenge; blood; murder
1. Introduction
George Peele’s The Battle of Alcazar (1594) has a special place in Elizabethan image of the Barbary. It embarks
upon an extensive description of the Moors who were principally African characters. Peele’s Muly Mahamet is the
Devil in his likeness. As a family killer, the play opens with a dumb display, which represents the assassination of
Muly Mahamet's uncle Abdelmunen and Muly Mahamet's younger brothers. The assassins were led by Muly
Mahamet himself. The Moor's stereotype is, likewise, employed openly to expose the supposed heinousness of
Moors and to depict Muslims as agents of evil (Tokson, 1982, p.4). The Elizabethan writers also had plenty of
opportunity to see Moors and Negroes in England. Indeed, a regular trade between England and Barbary had been
exercised during the 1550s and diplomatic relations during the 1570s (Bartels, 1992, p. pp. 517- 9). Samuel C. Chew
remarks that ‘the imagination and emotions of Englishmen were stirred by The Battle of Alcazar’ (Chew, 1937,
p.524). Chew also notes that Hakluyt supplied the Elizabethans with abundant information on the customs, manners,
laws, religion, government, literature, history, warfare, wealth, cattle, rituals and superstitions of the Oriental peoples
(Chew, 1937, p.11). Kabbani remarks that the entire 'East was a place of lascivious sensuality'(Kabbani, 1986, p.5).
The performative nature of Moorish identity has interesting implications for the English audience, who can see
characters striving to conform to an ideal that may appear horrible or ridiculous to them.
Early Elizabethan Londoners were interested in news and other races of Morocco. It was the reason of presenting
Moorish characters in these plays such as The Battle of Alcazar, Titus Andronicus, The Play of Stukeley, The
Merchant of Venice, Lust's Dominion, Othello and The Fair Maid of the West. The Elizabethan audience was much
informed about the Moors. When it comes to the representation of “others” on the London stage in Elizabethan
England, the Moors took a prominent position. John Tolan remarks that on both sides Muslims and Christians had
“feelings of rivalry, contempt, and superiority tinged or tempered at times with feelings of doubt, inferiority,
curiosity, or admiration” (Tolan, 2002, p.xvii). White Europeans had interpreted the blackness of the Moors as a sign
of inborn evil. Moor’s ethnic background served as an “amalgam of both religious and colour difference” (Loomba,
2002, p.47). Furthermore, the black or dark skin of Moors and other Muslim people of colour was compared by
fair-skinned Europeans with the colour of the devils, burnt black by the flames of hell. In general, to the Elizabethan
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audience a Moor was black, pagan, lustful, treacherous, barbarous and barely human (Abu-Bakr, 1997, p.124). In
fact, the depiction of a Moor filled a specific need in the dramatic structure by virtue of the heartless murderer's
characteristic of unlimited caution while he remains the African Other in terms of collective interactions. In The
Battle of Alcazar, Muly Mahamet's color seems to derive from a particular dramatic necessity. As with a Moor, the
playwright does not seem to be exploring the character; he is exploiting the black skin color. The Elizabethan
audience is excited by the appearance of the black Muslim Moors (Vaughan, 2005, p.29). Therefore, the history of
Moors is interesting as part of the history of the black Other.
The conception of the Otherness exists within the self as well as attached to particular bodies that get labeled and
marked as "the Other" (Weems, 2007, p.40). Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, English nation was
thinking about 'international community of Christendom' (Greenblatt, 2006, p.466). The transgression of power by
Muly Abdallah, his son Mohammed el-Mesloukh (Peele's Muly Mahamet) (Note 1) violated the Moorish law of
succession. Hence it created unrest, public dispute, and confusion in Barbary. Following the practice of Turkish
dynasts, Muly Mohammed el-Mesloukh simply ordered the murder of his uncle Abd el-Moumen and his two brothers
to assure succession to his son. Two of the princes, and Abd el-Malek, and Al-Mansoor escaped. In relation to the
theatre, Peele's Presenter outlines the dreadful tragic scene as 'Blood will have blood, foul murder scape no scourge'
(Act V, 8). In a dirty civil war, the two rival parties have brought foreign forces to Barbary to support their stands.
2. The Failed Crusade
George Peele wrote The Battle of Alcazar in 1589 but it was published in 1594. The play introduced the first black
Moor on London stage. Peele’s source of the play was John Poleman’s The Second Part of the Book of Battailes,
Fought in Our Age (1587), which included the Battle of Alcazar between the forces of Sebastian, king of Portugal, and
Abdelmelec, the king of Morocco. The dramatic story of the play portrays a bloody fight between Moors and
Christians. Peele has confined to the historical event in writing the play. Abdelmelec, who is known as Muly Molocco,
is the rightful King of Morocco. But his nephew Muly Mahamet, the Moor, attempts to take his throne. The chorus
recounts, through the use of a dumb show (a silent play or portrayal) that Muly Mahamet has slaughtered Abdelmelec's
brother Abdelmunen, as well as two young prince brothers. Abdelmunen's wife, Rubin Archis, depicts the dramatic
retaliation of the event in saying:
Of death, of blood, of wreak, and deep revenge,
Shall Rubin Archis frame her tragic songs:
In blood, in death, in murder, and misdeed,
This heaven’s malice did begin and end. (I,I, 84-7)
King Sebastian has promised military assistance to Muly Mahamet considering that he is performing honourably. On
the other side, Sultan Amurath, Emperor of the Turkey, leads army aid to assist Abdelmelec against the Portuguese
Sebastian and the Moorish Muly Mahamet. The armies have met in Alcazar valley in Morocco. In the midst of the
battle, Abdelmelec died in illness, but his brother Muly Mahamet Seth, concealed the news in order to keep their
troops in high morale. The battle works, and Abdelmelec's troops are victorious. Taking the historical context into
consideration of Peele's play, the other two kings have died in it, Muly Mahamet and the Portuguese king. However,
Abdelmelec's brother, Muly Mahamet Seth (historically known as Almanzor) is declared King of Morocco
(MacLean & Matar, 2011, p.61). In Peele’s Alcazar Thomas Stukeley, the disreputable English agent is a protagonist
Londoner fighting with the Portuguese king against the Moors (Danson, 2002, p.2). For some Elizabethans, Stukeley
is comparable to King Sebastian, and with good reason, for Stukeley too is represented by the playwright as a living
legend. He has also died in the battlefield.
Peele shares the sentiment with Sebastian in his campaign against the Turks and the Moors, though he seems against
Muly Mahamet and the crusade. He calls this war as ‘holy Christian war’ in purpose ‘To spend their bloods in honour
of their Christ' (II,iv,78,82). It is a crusade for the sake of 'Christ, for whom in chief we fight,\Hereby t’ enlarge the
bounds of Christendom' (III,iv, 15-6). This rightful war, that Christians’ God will bless. (III,iv,23). The war in Barbary
conforms to the concept of the holy war, as it is to implant Christianity in Africa; Sebastian says, that he 'leads the
way/To plant the Christian faith in Africa' (III,iv,16). For the Elizabethan audience, the ethical and pious altitudes of
the Christian people and cause go hand in hand with the moral and religious degradation of the Turks and the Moors.
But Peele is not so keen to consent that Sebastian's war in Morocco actually is a 'holy Christian war' (II,iv,78). Through
the tragedy, Peele conserves the admirable nature of Sebastian's announced purposes, and particularly Sebastian's
aspiration to the spread of Christianity. Nevertheless, throughout the speeches of the Presenter at interludes during the
play, Peele establishes the shameful nature of Sebastian's crusade. Subsequently, the play commemorates the failure of
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English politics in Barbary. Historically, Queen Elizabeth had supported the Portuguese king Don Sebastian, who had
assisted Ahmad bin Abdallah to recapture the Moroccan throne after the latter was overthrown by Abdel Malek's forces
in 1572.
The play confirms to the Elizabethan audience that numerous Britons have fought and died in the battle of Alcazar
(Matar, 1999, p.49). Nabil Matar argues that the representation of Muslims and Christians is simplistic as the Muslims
appear ‘bombastic and cruel’ while the Christian apprentices are martial heroes ‘because they come from England’
(Matar, 1999, pp.142–3). The account written by Hohannes Thomas Freigius and reprinted in Hakluyt explains “that
divers other [than Stukeley] English gentlemen were in this battle, whereof the most part were slain” (Hakluyt, 1904,
Vol. 6, p.294). Captain Stukeley's presence brought a sense of heroism for both the English common soldier and
gentleman in the battlefields of Islamic World (Hakluyt, 1904, Vol. 6, p.294). Later in the seventeenth century, when
Thomas Fuller reflects on Stukeley, he has again praised him for having “behaved himself most valiantly.” Almost
everything negative about him has been forgotten (Fuller, 1965, p. 415).
The failed crusade is a message of the internal force in the Elizabethan reign. In history, Queen Elizabeth was quite
vigilant to the endangerment of which Peele was warning about agreeing to Abdelmelec's proposal for an alliance. In
February 1589, the Queen wrote to Almanzor about her desire to keep the Moroccan ambassador in England as long as
possible (Casellas, 2007, p.124). However, in The Battle of Alcazar Peele occludes a significant difference between the
Moroccan and English laws of succession: while in England the eldest son inherits the throne, under the Moorish
Sa'adians the succession has passed to the eldest member of the immediate family. Peele correctly identifies
Abdelmelec as the legitimate and the noble heir to the throne, but he conceals the fact that the villain of his play, Muly
Mahamet would have been the legitimate heir according to English traditions of succession. However, this campaign is
largely unsuccessful and brought great dishonour to Christendom. It has managed the barbarous black Moors and the
white failed Europeans in evil activities and monstrous consequences.
3. Racial Discourse
Peele's The Battle of Alcazar (1589) is a racial landscape of Peele’s Elizabethan England and Western Europe.
Understanding racial blackness in the sixteenth century perspective demonstrates as one of the numerous qualities,
physical or otherwise, that isolates and enormously depresses those who grasp it as it is a mark of human nature. Moors
and Negroes had opportunity to stay in Elizabethan England. They shared the common connotations of “alien” or
“foreigner,” the word “can mean…non-black Muslim; black Christian, or black Muslim” (Barthelemy, 1987, p.7).
During the early modern period there was a merge of cultural experiences that hadn’t, in the past, been experienced
which led to a panic of foreigners. In fact, there were so many Negroes in England by 1601 that Queen Elizabeth issued
an order for their transportation out of the realm (Obaid, 1974, pp. 150-5). Between 1517 and 1595, several violent
demonstrations took place in London to protest for the presence of foreigners working in England. The Parliament
tried to appease the people by expelling most Flemish workers and refugees in 1575 (Marienstrass, 1985, p.102).
The Elizabethan racial, linguistic and other cultural aspects among discrete Muslim peoples were acknowledged, and
occasionally exploited, but the weight of Medieval Christian tradition intended that they were still, at root,
‘Mahometans’ to the Christian spectator of early modem times, and with this came an entire series of establishing
cultural and/or racial qualities, fundamentally denotative of numerous practices of deviance and threat (Loomba, 2002,
pp.45-74). The theatrical Moor of early modern Europe was an actor in blackface. When a “Moor” like
Shakespeare’s Othello appeared on the London stage in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, he was essentially an
emblematic figure, not a “naturalistic” portrayal of a particular ethnic type (Cowhig, 1985, p.178). As John Gillies
reminds readers of Othello, '. . . the sharper, more elaborately differentiated and more hierarchical character of
post-Elizabethan constructions of racial difference are inappropriate to the problems posed by the Elizabethan other'
(Gillies, 1994, p.32). Othello is not to be identified with a specific, historically accurate racial category; rather, he is
a dramatic symbol of a dark, threatening power at the edge of Christendom. As such, Othello the Moor is associated
with a whole set of related terms—“Moor,” “Turk,” “Ottomite,” “Saracen,” “Mahometan,” “Egyptian,” “Judean,”
“Indian”—all constructed in opposition to Christian faith and virtue. Looking predominantly at the meaning of
Othello’s description, “the Moor,” G. K. Hunter describes how this term was assumed:
'The word ‘Moor’ had no clear racial status” to begin with; “its first meaning in the O.E.D. is ‘Mahmoden,’”
which itself meant merely “infidel,” “non-Christian,” “barbarian.” “Moors were, as foreign infidels, virtually
equivalent to Turks: ‘the word “Moor” was very vague ethnographically, and very often seems to have meant
little more than ‘black-skinned outsider,’ but it was not vague in its antithetical relationship to the European norm
of the civilized white Christian.' (Hunter, 1967, p.147).
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The Elizabethan writers have communicated notorious existing prejudices and stereotypes on those of African descents
based solely on their dark complexion. Traditionally, blacks were seen by some as the descendants of Ham (Genesis,
ch. 9), one of Noah’s three sons. The insistence upon black skin and Negro physic suggests that the Elizabethan
playwrights select these racial details from among those Africans who would have provided what Professor Eldred
Jones terms the greatest "dramatic contrast" with Europeans (Jones, 1971, p.41). Although blackness and Muslims are
stereotyped as evil, Renaissance depictions of the Moor are vague, varied, inconsistent, and contradictory. As Matar,
Vitkus and Hunter have established the argument that the term ‘Moor’ was used interchangeably with such similarly
ambiguous terms as ‘African,' ‘Ethiopian,’ ‘Negro,’ and even ‘Indian’ to designate a native of Africa or Asia who
might be either black or Muslim, neither, or both (Neill, 2000, pp.269–74; Vaughan, 1994, pp.56–8). Cohen remarks
that 'the Africans were thus perceived as closer to a life of lust and to Satan' than were the other two marginalised
groups (Cohen, 1980, p.8). For instance, the King of Fez, Mullisheg, The Fair Maid of the West is the lustful Moor in
Elizabethan Drama. The Moorish character's black skin, evidently, could have derived from any of the blacks seen in
England.
The black Moors remain fundamentally unexploited by arguments for racism in Elizabethan Britain. London has
held very diverse experience of the inhabitant strangers, identified variously as Moors, Negroes, Indians, and Arabs
in the community records, law courts, portfolio and payment lists. Imtiaz Habib detects records for about 100
Londoners from Elizabeth's coronation in 1558 until c. 1605 who were or may have been Moors or Africans (Habib,
2008, pp. 314-39). The Elizabethans frequently dispute, for example, whether or not a person’s blackness is purely a
physical misfortune or indicative of spiritual impurity and moral depravity. Bayouli notes that 'the Elizabethan
playwrights refer to characters as negroes while giving Barbary as their origin' (Bayouli, 2008, p.118). The
distinctive variability of Elizabethan awareness of race bears direct impact on the specific way blackness is othered
in Elizabethan age. Because so many altered standards are considered estates for racial isolation, implication of
blackness on personhood is vastly opposed and varies upon several situations. Therefore, “Blackamoors” are a
common feature of conventional plays, pageants and masques, and were specifically accompanying with the forces of
darkness, as for instance in Ben Jonson’s Masque of Darkness. Jonson’s masque turns on the dissimilarity between
light and dark; even as the blackness of Peele's Muly Mahamet is underlined in the play for his violence and brutality.
Sometimes, the black Moor is categorized alternately and sometimes simultaneously in paradoxical extremes, as
barbarous or monstrous\dreadful, civil or savage. However, the different skin color of the Moors in Peele's The Battle
of Alcazar (1589), for example, between Muly Mahamet, the prototypical cruel black Moor, and his uncle
Abdelmelec, the Orientalized dignified white Moor makes their appearance on stage quite attractive.
The theme of the blackness seems to be reflected in the unanticipated reversal of the color symbolism in Peele. The
black skin color, as an element of the characterization of the protagonist, appeals for an explanation getting out of
both character and plot. Michael Neill proposes that even 'the putative visibility of the Moor’s “aggressive Otherness”
was a source of doubt and concern given the term’s indeterminacy' (Neill, 2000, p.272). In Peele's play, it puts
emphasis on the visual looks of the noblest Muly Mahamet’s blackness. His blackness is used to depict Moorish
characteristics with bombastic deviousness. He was described as a 'Negro Moor' (II,i,3). The semantic meaning of
the adjective 'Negro,' is signified the allusions to Muly Mahamet's character as black like evil or dark as gloom, and
so he has no light for peace or morality for humanity. Muly Mahamet's blackness is the colour-prejudiced component
of the English audience. His blackness 'remains the appropriate adjective to the ugly and the frightening, to the devil
and his children, the wicked and the infidel' (Hunter, 1997, p.35).
Like Peele, Shakespeare in Titus Andronicus (1590) and Othello (l604), for instance, Aaron and Othello, the two
Moors embody the most negative versions of the Negro stereotype. Apart from his devotion to his illegitimate child,
Aaron is extravagantly evil. He concludes Titus by repenting any good deeds which he may have inadvertently
performed and wishing that he could have committed ten thousand more evil deeds (5.3.185–90). While Aaron’s
adherence to Moorish stereotypes, Shakespeare has made him fascinating as a demonic embodiment of evil but it
makes him less interesting as a human being. Peele uses the same Moorish stereotypes to produce the same effect. In
The Battle of Alcazar, rivalry becomes psychologically apparent through the barbarous Moor's increasing conformity
to his wicked stock character. He thereby identifies himself with Elizabethan archetypes of the villainous Moor of
London stage. Yet the process of Muly Mahamet's degeneration into a stereotype is indeed what creates a sense of
his inhumanity and complexity. The racial factor itself demonstrates that the character's black skin color should be
inherent in the dramatic elements of Muly Mahomet's manners. He represents the black devil of the play. At the end,
the Moor is destroyed as the result of the machination of fratricide who is punished within the confines of his
dramatic action. The last image of his turns is to turn life black for all.
The Oriental racial discourse brings out unpleasant images of the black Moors. Muly Mahomet reverts to the identity
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of the gloomy devil and the stereotypical cruel 'Moor' or 'Turk' – violence, mercilessness, faithlessness, lawlessness,
despair, jealousy, frustrated lust. Othello and Aaron in Shakespeare, Mullisheg in Thomas Heywood or Muly
Mahamet and his son and wife in George Peele, are all villainous black Moors, who are also defined by the Eastern
world, not "Africa" that lays south to Europe; but his colour symbolized evil, and, like the devil on stage Muly
Mahamet is distinguishes from his virtuous half-brother, Abdelmelec, the rightful prince. Peele has rationalized the
black Mahamet's dissimilarity by depicting him "Negro" who does not more represent actual Negroes than the evil in
Medieval Age.
4. The Barbarous Moor
The brutal character of Muly Mahamet is conventionally depicted to represent the Moorish characteristics as opposed
to the humanistic ideals by means of the rhetoric of denial, demonization, cursing, animal imagery, and barbarism.
Barthelemy notes that the "overwhelming majority" of black characters presented on the stage in England "between
1589 and 1695 endorsed, represented, or were evil" (Barthelemy, 1987:72). For some Elizabethan writers, the Moors
do not live up to the humanistic urban, civilized and courtly expectations. In a recent study of the depiction of Moors,
Virginia Mason Vaughan’s Performing Blackness (2005), examines the idea of the stereotype and the blackface by
emphasizing the difference between audiences and talking characters. For Vaughan, there are dramatic signs in
performance such as 'appearance, linguistic tropes, speech patterns and plot situations;' she argues for these signs
function as a system to shape “the ways black characters were ‘read’ by white audiences” (Vaughan, 2005, p.3).
The typecasting patterns of black characters are prejudiced. The strength and confidence of the evil black characters
are probably more accustomed to the representation on stage of the type of subservient and menial blacks that have
appeared in some Elizabethan plays such as Aaron in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, and the Moor in Othello,
Eleazer in Dekker’s Lust’s Dominion (1599), etc. Therefore, violent characters such as the Moor Muly Mahamet and
his son in George Peele's Battle of Alcazar are strong, self-confident characters, but as blacks, they stood for evil.
Muly Mahamet introduces his stereotyped Moorishness as of a ‘negro’ and ‘devil’ (II,i,3; III, v, 45) as part of his
attempt to act against his native kinsmen. Peele's attempts to demonize and disempower Muly Mahamet for his racial
or natural difference that proves the Moor an inferior outsider but to a political status that makes him the authorizing
insider and that threatens to keep Muly Mahamet in the margins of power. Peele portrays Muly Mahamet as a
barbarous cruel and traitorous rogue, and his evilness is directly associated with the blackness of his skin. Muly
Mahamet himself is neatly and absolutely contained within the earth; but by making the fate of his son ambiguous,
the play leaves the threat of Moorish badness as ever-present. It exposes the disturbing monarch succession to shape
a Moorish culture's actions and reactions, as it drives the attention to the Moorish flux of representation. The play
evokes gruesome visions of a Moor who falls quickly into monstrous against his uncles assigning him its most
aggressive voice, corrupt ambition as an incontestably wicked villain. In fact, Muly Mahamet’s skin colour and
negroid looks are primarily the qualities that remarks the devil.
Muly Mahamet’s personal characteristics may have seemed at consistency with certain widely-held notions of the
proper traits for blacks on London stage. The Elizabethan stereotype of the black Moors is a result of the
crystallization of attitudes developed in an attempt to justify pirate slavery (Mattar, 2001, p.189). Although the Moor
descends from the noble family Arabian Muly Xarif of Makkah (I,I, 27), he is one of the worst Machiavellian. His
stock character charts his immorality and his natural blackness as a manifestation of his wickedness. He is depicted
beyond the stereotypical scenes, e.g. villainous bombast, horrific endings, deceptive use of lust, etc.
The tyrannical Moorish king is a typical stage-villain, black in his look and bloody-ill in his deeds. Emily Bartels
describes Muly Mahamet, 'the prototypical cruel black Moor' (Bartels, 2008, p.434). His roots lie in most likely an
amalgamation of criminals from other Elizabethan plays. She compares 'Muly Mahamet, the prototypical cruel black
Moor' with Shakespeare’s Aaron, 'the consummate villain' (Bartels, 2008, p.434). Muly Mahamet is a concerning
self-hatred devil that colors the earth with its own imagined darkness. Muly Mahamet is a striking example of the
traditional Oriental portrayal of the Moors. A variety of qualifying words are used with 'Moor' in reference to Muly
Mahamet. The Presenter initiates the play in dubbing Muly Mahamet, the Moor as 'the barbarous Moor', 'The negro,'
'the unhappy traitor-king,' 'the unbelieving Moor,' 'the ambitious tyranny', and 'this accursed Moor' (Act I, 9; 46; 902,
92l). In his second comment on the barbarous Moor, the Presenter calls him 'the murderer of his progeny,' 'the cursed
king' (Act IV), 'this foul ambitious Moor,' 'the foul murder' (Act V), 'a lusty Moor,' 'manly Moor,' 'brave Moor' (Act
IV,41; 949; 972; 998). In fact, the variable use of dubbed phrases such as 'unbelieving Moor' (Act IV,46) and 'accursed
Moor' (Act V,54) show the anti-Muslim sentiment familiar among Christian authors at that time. The racial terms such
as 'barbarous Moor,' 'Negro Moor' by antagonistic characters, and 'lusty Moor,' 'manly Moor,' 'brave Moor' by friendly