The East in Early Modern English Court Performances

Early modern court performance and race-making combine in this volume to focus on the representations of the East during the early modern English period. The intersections of dramatic experience, court studies, and identity politics are read through race, empire, Orientalism and material culture. The volume thus treads new ground in the study of non-Shakespearean drama made for the royal courts and the public stage.

Murat Ögütcü, Sophie Chiari and Aisha Hussain's edited collection sheds fresh light on the multiple ways early modern dramatic works made use of their respective theatrical spaces to represent the conflicting and changing perceptions of the East in England. Contributors analyse how stage architecture, costumes and effects of performance actually produced multifaceted conceptualisations of the East. Essays also emphasise the material aspects of dramatic performances through the recurring motifs of crowns, masques and the East India trade. The volume focuses primarily on non-Shakespearean plays by Ben Jonson, John Fletcher, Thomas Heywood and William Davenant from Mary I to Mary II through the Elizabethan, Jacobean, Caroline and later Stuart periods. The geographical range of the contexts highlighted throughout the volume covers North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, Safavid Persia and Mughal and Hindu India. The plays examined were and continue to be of political, social, historical, religious, geographical and cultural significance to both early modern and contemporary audiences alike.