Abstract
The article explores the disruptive social contexts and inter-racial relationships in Thomas Dekker’s Lust’s Dominion (c.1599–1600) [Collier found out about its original performance date, which was in February 1600, and that it was first published in 1657 (Collier 1827, p. 264)] with focus on the Moorish Eleazar. The play is about race, lust, revenge and politics. The Elizabethan experienced a cultural blend and a fear of Africans and other foreigners. Like Dekker, Elizabethan dramatists imparted well-known contemporary prejudices and stereotypes on those of specific origin in Africa based solely on their dark skin. Elizabethan shows reinforced the image of the Moor as cruel, tyrannical and deceitful. The African Moors are portrayed to the Elizabethan expectations as being demi-devil, deceitful, lascivious, unpleasant, merciless egotist as soon as he appears. The depiction of the evil Moor contributes to Elizabethan superiority as an intrinsic right. Dekker illustrates the pervasive racism of Elizabethan Europe and the plain consequences of this institutionalized prejudice.
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Notes
Jasper described Dekker as a “militant Protestant”. See her book on Dekker, The Dragon and the Dove (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1990), the introduction.
The book was written originally in Arabic in 1526 (Bekkaoui (ed.) 1999, Lust’s Dominion, pp 20–62).
Moriscos are known as Christianized Muslims from Iberia; see Gerald MacLean and Nabil Matar. Britain and the Islamic World 1558–1713. (Oxford University Press 2011), p. 85.
See Nabil Matar, “Introduction: England and Mediterranean Captivity, 1577–1704,” Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England ed. Daniel J. Vitkus (New York: Columbia UP 2001), p. 1.
The surviving portrait of the Moroccan ambassador to Queen Elizabeth on 15 June 1600, “Hamet Xarife,” as he was known in England, or “Abd al-Wahid bin Mas‘ood bin Mohammad Annouri,” is an evidence of liking.
Bernard Harris corresponds to the literary availability of portraying Moors on London stage as “A Portrait of a Moor” in Shakespeare Survey (1958).
Aphra Behn’s play, Abdelazar or The Moor's Revenge (1676), is an adaptation of the Dekker’s Lust's Dominion (1600).
Dekker used historical Spanish characters to humiliate the Spanish State.
See the discussion of Othello by Daniel Vitkus: “Turning Turk in Othello: The Conversion and Damnation of the Moor,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 48 (1997): 145–177.
See Emily Bartels, “Too Many Blackamoors: Deportation, Discrimination, and Elizabeth I.” ESL 46.2. (Spring 2006): pp. 305–322.
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Al-Olaqi, F.M.T.S. The Villainous Moor: Eleazar in Dekker’s Lust’s Dominion (1600). Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci. 10, 69–85 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-016-0128-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-016-0128-9