Cities of the Sea: Constantinople—Mobility and Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

The sea was connected with the classical idea of unstable fortune and the more recent implications of mercantile cosmopolitanism in the Elizabethans’ and Jacobeans’ minds. Discussing the cultural meanings of the maritime world in early modern English literature, Steve Mentz makes the case for “a blue cultural studies,” by which he refers to explorations of the maritime discourses that can change interpretations of literature. Mentz’s approach is integrated in the broader concept of “new thalassology,” devised by Nicholas Horden and Peregrine Purcell and intended to revitalize Mediterranean history.1 My primary concern is to use the sea environment to reconsider paradigms of early modern globalization as revealed through dramatic representations of sea cities. I will explore the theatrical inflections of the cultures of communities influenced by the sea as inspired by geographic narratives describing a strategically located city of the sea—Constantinople.2 Early modern English drama placed the meanings of the sea in the context of the massive ocean-bound expansion of European culture that began in the fifteenth century, but mainly in the old world of the Mediterranean that generated that culture. The sea’s ancient meanings shifted in the early modern period as geographic experience and knowledge increased.