Representing Semíramis in Shakespeare and Calderón

Abstract

Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus appeared against a backdrop of suspicion concerning the Oriental Other, and evokes the legend of Semíramis, a legend central to a pivotal play in the Spanish Golden Age, Calderón's La hija del aire. Like La hija del aire, Titus Andronicus is notable for its excessive use of artifice and mechanistic staging throughout the history of its performance. Comparing the choices Shakespeare made in depicting the Oriental Other with the more fully articulated ones made by Calderón indicates that excessive use of artifice may well have been the key to putting Otherness on the stage. Playwrights could study the effects of Oriental Otherness on both royal and public spectators and thereby explore the simultaneous fears and desires evoked by such figures. Analysing the context and representations of the Oriental Other provided by Shakespeare in Titus Andronicus through the lens of Calderón's staging decisions in the two parts of La hija del aire offers a way of testing this thesis.