0.1From George Peele, The Battle of Alcazar (1588-89)

[George Peele's The Battle of Alcazar is one of the earliest plays to stage multiple characters who are both non-white and Muslim, and it is often seen as the inaugurator of the stereotypical figure of the villainous Moor. The play recounts a series of internecine struggles for the throne of Morocco, focussing on the ruthless manipulator Mulai Hamet who tricks play's rather limp hero the King of Portugual into sending troops into Alcazar where both men are eventually killed. While Mulai Hamet's perfidy is associated persistently with his blackness, the play's representation of race, religion, and nationality is considerably more complex than a simple equation of blackness with evil, and, despite its shambling plot and its emphasis on pageantry rather than political subtlety, The Battle of Alcazar provides a useful window onto the intricacies of political, economic, and cultural exchange in the Mediterranean in the sixteenth century. The play's opening moments, excerpted below, set up its main plot, showing Hamet enact in dumbshow the murder of his two younger brothers and his uncle, thus establishing himself firmly as the play's central villain.]

1Enter the Presenter

2Honor, the spur that pricks the princely mind
3To follow rule and climb the stately chair,
4With great desire inflames the Portingall,
5An honorable and courageous king,
6To undertake a dangerous, dreadful war
7And aid with Christian arms the barbarous Moor,
8The Negro Mulai Hamet that withholds
9The kingdom from his uncle Abdulmelec,
10Whom proud Abdallas wronged,
11And in his throne installs his cruel son,
12That now usurps upon this prince,
13This brave barbarian lord Mulai Molocco.
14The passage to the crown by murder made,
15Abdallas dies, and designs this tyrant king
16Of whom we treat, sprung from the Arabian Moor,
17Black in his look and bloody in his deeds,
18And in his shirt, stained with a cloud of gore,
19Presents himself with naked sword in hand,
20Accompanied, as now you may behold,
21With devils coated in the shapes of men.

The first dumbshow

22Enter Mulai Mohammed and his son, and his two young brethren. The Moor showeth them the bed and then takes his leave of them, and they betake them to their rest. And then the presenter speaketh:

23Like those that were by kind of murder mummed,
24Sit down and see what heinous stratagems
25These damned wits contrive. And lo, alas,
26How like poor lambs prepared for sacrifice
27This traitor king hales to their longest home
28These tender lords his younger brethren both.

29The second dumbshow

30Enter the Moor and two murderers bringing in his uncle Abdelmunen. Then they draw the curtains and smoother the young princes in the bed. Which done, in sight of the uncle, they strangle him in his chair and then go forth. And then the Presenter saith:

31His brethren thus in fatal bed behearst,
32His father's brother of too light belief
33This Negro puts to death by proud command.
34Say not these things are feigned, for true they are,
35And understand how eager to enjoy
36His father's crown this unbelieving Moor,
37Murdering his uncle and his brethren,
38Triumphs in his ambitious tyranny
39Till Nemesis, high mistress of revenge,
40That with her scourge keeps all the world in awe,
41With thundering drums awakes the god of war
42And calls the furies from Avernus's crags
43To range and rage, and vengeance to inflict,
44Vengeance on this accursed Moor for sin.
45And now behold how Abdulmelec comes,
46Uncle to this unhappy traitor king,
47Armed with great aid that Amurath had sent,
48Great Amurath, Emperor of the East,
49For service done to Sultan Solomon,
50Under whose colors he had served in field,
51Flying the fury of this Negro's father
52That wronged his brethren to install his son.
53Sit you and see this true and tragic war,
54A modern matter full of blood and ruth
55Where three bold kings, confounded in their height,
56Fell to the earth contending for a crown,
57And call this war The Battle of Alcazar.

Exit