| A Christian Turn'd Turk | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Written by | Robert Daborne |
| Characters | 25 |
| Original language | English |
| Subject | Religious conversion / Piracy / Islam / Protestantism |
| Setting | Tunis |
A Christian Turn'd Turk (1612) is a play by the English dramatist Robert Daborne. It concerns the conversion of the pirate John Ward to Islam.
The list of dramatis personae printed in the 1612 quarto is incomplete and inaccurate. The list has been revised, missing characters' names added, "ghost characters" removed, and inconsistencies corrected. [1]
|
|
A Christian Turn'd Turk was entered into the Stationers' Register on 1 February 1612 (new style) and was published in quarto format later that year by the bookseller William Barrenger. [2]
A Christian Turn'd Turk's protagonist John Ward is based on the historical figure of the same name. A notorious pirate, he operated along the Barbary coast in the early 17th century and was also known by the name Jack Ward.[ citation needed ] Tales of Ward's piracy heavily influenced A Christian Turn'd Turk. Dabourne based his depiction of Ward on two pamphlets which recounted tales of Ward's piracy. [3] The pamphlets portrayed him as an engaging antihero and a risk-taker who rose from poverty to riches. Ward's capturing of foreign ships was lauded in several popular ballads but there was still concern in England regarding 'his crimes against God'. [4] Ward would later make an agreement with the Turks to use Tunis as a base for his piratical operations and would attack Christian ships in an attempt to steal their lucrative cargo. [3] Despite Ward's attacks on Christian ships, he remained a popular figure during the early years of James I's reign. James I's proclamation against piracy in 1608-9 added to the almost mythical status Ward had cultivated, derived from his capture of a rich Venetian argosy in 1607. [5] However, his conversion to Islam and assumption of the name Yusuf Reis was considered scandalous, and his relentless and indiscriminate attacks on sailing vessels caused concerns about the amount of money England was losing as a result of his piracy. [6]
Ward's conversion is a pivotal part of A Christian Turn'd Turk and relates to contemporary concerns regarding apostasy.[ citation needed ] Converting to another faith was considered heretical by the English with Judaism and Islam portrayed as the most undesirable religions. [7] [8] The actions of Ward and other pirates were decried not only because of their criminality but also because of the temptation for other Christians to turn to piracy or to Islam for economic gain. The ease of conversion to Islam and the lack of regret amongst those who had converted was surprising, and the lack of divine retribution for converts because of their heresy unsettling. [9] Despite Ward's conversion and incessant piracy, he was flourishing in Tunis without undergoing divine or human punishment for his apostasy.' [10]
In the play, Ward converts to Islam in order to marry Voada, a beautiful Turkish woman with whom he has fallen in love. Ward's conversion to Islam (portrayed in dumbshow) is contrasted with the repentance and pardon of Simon Dansiker, the other pirate captain in the play (also shown in dumbshow). Dansiker's reform is complicated by the reluctance of the French merchants he's robbed to accept him—until he returns to Tunis to apprehend the renegade Jew, Benwash. The unrepentant Ward dies at the end of the play—though he delivers an anti-Muslim rant that conforms to the prejudices of the play's original audience. (This was a large leap of dramatic license on Daborne's part, since the real Ward would die eleven years after the play was written.) [11]
The dumb show of Act I Scene VIII depicts Ward's conversion ceremony. As with other dumb shows, there are magical and supernatural overtones as well as high-ranking officials represented by the Muftis who administer the ceremony. The scene was presented as a dumb show in order to display the solemnity and spiritual importance of Ward's supposed conversion. [12] The scene contains many elements which portray contemporary conceptions of Islam and how Islamic conversion ceremony may be carried out. Daborne looked towards contemporary accounts of Islamic conversion to draw inspiration and gain ideas on how to stage the scene. The head of Mahomet, a common prop of the period, was used to emphasise the religious nature of the scene but also to highlight Islam's status as a pagan faith. [13]
An extract of Robert Daborne's A Christian Turn'd Turk was performed as part of a special Read Not Dead event at Shakespeare's Globe in the newly constructed Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. [14] Four directors and four scholars were teamed up with actors and presented their arguments with selected scenes at a special hustings event on Thursday 29 May 2014. David Oakes teamed with Dr Emma Smith of the University of Oxford presented the case for Daborne's play. Alex Lanipekun performed the part of Capt. Ward, Helen Bradbury as Voada, Adam Ewan as Dansiker and Matthew Houlihan in various other parts. The play was subsequently selected to be performed on Sunday 5 October 2014 in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse with the following cast: [15]
Samuel Wanamaker, was an American actor and director who moved to the United Kingdom after becoming fearful of being blacklisted in Hollywood due to his communist sympathies. He is credited as the person most responsible for saving The Rose Theatre, which led to the modern recreation of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, where he is commemorated in the name of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, the site's second theatre.
The Barbary pirates, or Barbary corsairs or Ottoman corsairs, were Muslim pirates and privateers who operated from North Africa, based primarily in the ports of Salé, Rabat, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, in reference to the Berbers. Their predation extended throughout the Mediterranean, south along West Africa's Atlantic seaboard and into the North Atlantic as far north as Iceland, but they primarily operated in the western Mediterranean. In addition to seizing merchant ships, they engaged in Razzias, raids on European coastal towns and villages, mainly in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, but also in the British Isles, the Netherlands, and Iceland. The main purpose of their attacks was slaves for the Ottoman slave trade as well as the general Arab slavery market in North Africa and the Middle East. Slaves in Barbary could be of many ethnicities, and of many different religions, such as Christian, Jewish, or Muslim.
Locrine is an Elizabethan play depicting the legendary Trojan founders of the nation of England and of Troynovant (London). The play presents a cluster of complex and unresolved problems for scholars of English Renaissance theatre.
Blackfriars Theatre was the name given to two separate theatres located in the former Blackfriars Dominican priory in the City of London during the Renaissance. The first theatre began as a venue for the Children of the Chapel Royal, child actors associated with the Queen's chapel choirs, and who from 1576 to 1584 staged plays in the vast hall of the former monastery. The second theatre dates from the purchase of the upper part of the priory and another building by James Burbage in 1596, which included the Parliament Chamber on the upper floor that was converted into the playhouse. The Children of the Chapel played in the theatre beginning in the autumn of 1600 until the King's Men took over in 1608. They successfully used it as their winter playhouse until all the theatres were closed in 1642 when the English Civil War began.
John Ward or Birdy, also known as Jack Ward or later as Yusuf Raïs, was an English pirate around the turn of the 17th century who later became a Barbary Corsair operating out of Tunis during the early 17th century.
Shakespeare's Globe is a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, an Elizabethan playhouse for which William Shakespeare wrote his plays, in the London Borough of Southwark, on the south bank of the River Thames. The original theatre was built in 1599, destroyed by the fire in 1613, rebuilt in 1614, and then demolished in 1644. The modern Globe Theatre is an academic approximation based on available evidence of the 1599 and 1614 buildings. It is considered quite realistic, though modern safety requirements mean that it accommodates only 1,400 spectators compared to the original theatre's 3,000.
The Whitefriars Theatre was a theatre in Jacobean London, in existence from 1608 to the 1620s — about which only limited and sometimes contradictory information survives.
The Renegado, or The Gentleman of Venice is a late Jacobean stage play, a tragicomedy written by Philip Massinger and first published in 1630. The play has attracted critical attention for its treatment of cultural conflict between Christian Europe and Muslim North Africa.
Jan Janszoon van Haarlem, commonly known as Reis Mourad the Younger, was a Dutch pirate in Algeria who converted to Islam after being captured by a Moorish state in 1618. He began serving as a pirate, one of the most famous of the 17th-century "Salé Rovers". Together with other corsairs, he helped establish the independent Republic of Salé at the city of that name, serving as the first President and Grand Admiral. He also served as Governor of Oualidia.
Robert Daborne was an English dramatist of the Jacobean era.
The Barbary slave trade refers to slave markets on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, which included the Ottoman provinces of Algeria, Tunisia and Tripolitania and the independent sultanate of Morocco, between the 16th and middle of the 18th century. The Ottoman provinces in North Africa were nominally under Ottoman suzerainty, but in reality they were mostly autonomous.
There was a certain amount of cultural contact between Europe in the Renaissance to Early Modern period and the Islamic world, however decreasing in intensity after medieval cultural contact in the era of the crusades and the Reconquista.
Siemen Danziger, better known by his anglicized names Zymen Danseker and Simon de Danser, was a 17th-century Dutch privateer and corsair. His name is also written Danziker, Dansker, or Danser.
Protestantism and Islam entered into contact during the early-16th century when the Ottoman Empire, expanding in the Balkans, first encountered Calvinist Protestants in present-day Hungary and Transylvania. As both parties opposed the Austrian Holy Roman Emperor and his Roman Catholic allies, numerous exchanges occurred, exploring religious similarities and the possibility of trade and military alliances.
The Conquest of Tunis in 1574 marked the final conquest of Tunis by the Ottoman Empire over the Spanish Empire. This was an event of great significance as it decided that North Africa would be under Muslim rather than Christian rule and ended the Spanish Conquista of Northern Africa, which started in 1497 under the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. The capture of Tunis in 1574 "sealed the Ottoman domination of the eastern and central Maghreb".
The Anglo-Moroccan alliance was established at the end of the 16th century and the early 17th century between the kingdoms of England and Morocco. Commercial agreements had been reached by Queen Elizabeth I of England and the Moroccan Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur on the basis of a common enmity to Philip II of Spain. The arms trade dominated the exchange, and numerous attempts at direct military collaboration were also made.
Anglo-Turkish piracy or the Anglo-Barbary piracy refers to the collaboration between Barbary pirates and English pirates against Catholic shipping during the 17th century.
Sir Francis Verney was an English adventurer, soldier of fortune, and pirate. A nobleman by birth, he left England after the House of Commons sided with his stepmother in a legal dispute over his inheritance, and became a mercenary in Morocco and later a Barbary corsair.
Joseph Pitts (1663–1735?) was an Englishman who was taken into slavery by Barbary pirates in Algiers, Algeria in 1678 at the age of fourteen or fifteen. During his time in captivity, Pitts went through three masters over the course of more than fifteen years, with whom he travelled to Cairo and Alexandria. Though he escaped between the years 1693 and 1694, it was not until 1704 that Pitts first published his account. Pitts's A True and Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohammetans, includes descriptions of his capture and captivity, including some of the first English descriptions of Islamic rituals. Converting to Islam while a slave, Pitts was the first Englishman to record the proceedings of the hajj. Pitts also describes the people of seventeenth-century North Africa in detail, providing particulars on their manner of eating and dressing, the customs of their religion and marriage, and their economic and slave systems. Pitts's narrative was the first and most detailed description of Islam and the manners of Muslims written by a European during the seventeenth century.
Ottoman Tunis refers to the episode of the Turkish presence in Ifriqiya during the course of three centuries from the 16th century until the 18th century, when Tunis was officially integrated into the Ottoman Empire as the Eyalet of Tunis (province). Eventually including all of the Maghrib except Morocco, the Ottoman Empire began with the takeover of Algiers in 1516 by the Ottoman Turkish corsair and beylerbey Oruç Reis. The first Ottoman conquest of Tunis took place in 1534 under the command of Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha, the younger brother of Oruç Reis, who was the Kapudan Pasha of the Ottoman Fleet during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. However, it wasn't until the final Ottoman reconquest of Tunis from Spain in 1574 under Kapudan Pasha Uluç Ali Reis that the Turks permanently acquired the former Hafsid Tunisia, retaining it until the French occupation of Tunisia in 1881.