Abstract
The Ottomans were represented in the imagination of Elizabethan drama. However, the Ottoman Sultans were remarkably in demand on Elizabethan stage. Robert Greene's Selimus (1594) shows a real interest in exploring and understanding the psyche of the Ottoman Sultan. The play's pattern theme of patricide explores the unnatural characteristics of the Ottoman royal family. The dramatic scenes of the murderous actions are engaging in lawless incursion upon ancient historical claims. Selimus appears as a proud ambitious tyrant, polluted with the blood of his own brothers. The fraternal conflict forms the inevitable bloodshed in transferring power to descendants in the Ottoman Empire. Greene depicts Sultan Selimus as the scourge of God to the Ottoman House. He holds some philosophy which is contrary to Elizabethan ethical and succession rules. Greene's interpretation of his conflict in the domestic scenes is a significant acknowledgement of the settled nature of Turkish sovereignty, and indeed of its complexity, at his own days.
Highlights
Elizabethan drama represents the Ottoman Turks in an exciting episode
The image of Selimus is based on tyranny and violent deaths to bring the cultural geography of the current Turkish ruler within the analytic framework of classical political theory
Selimus rejects Islam as part of his secular analysis of his thoughts and deeds, he echoes the intentions and actions of Prophet Muhammad in introducing the violence in the name of the religion, as perceived in the Western Christian traditions to be endorsed by religion
Summary
Elizabethan drama represents the Ottoman Turks in an exciting episode. The historical lineage of Sultan Selim caught the attention of the Elizabethan writers. Elizabethan playwrights incorporated Turkish material which had considerable influence on English literature, becoming a classic collection of the whole Orient These dramatists reproduced previous historical, cultural and religious stereotypes of the Turks from the Medieval Age. The Elizabethan traditional hostility towards Islam and the Ottoman Empire was because of the skepticism of integration and multiculturalism. Greene's Selimus (1595) was significantly prominent in shaping the Elizabethan judgement of the Ottoman Turks in which the age of Sultan Selim I was a transition period of Turkish history and politics. It is interested and rational that his Tamburlaine stature is a Turkish sultan: the play's portrayal of a series of carnage headed over by the Emperor Selimus is invented to out-Marlowe’s Tamburlaine since Marlowe describes Tamburlaine as the scourge of God. But Greene upsets the historical context that Tamburlaine is transformed from conqueror of the Turks into a Turk himself to serve a theatrical imperative. His reign provided a complex object of study for western writers of the sixteenth century, embodying an image at once of effective power and domestic tyranny
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