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Palgrave Macmillan

Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699

The Imagined Empire

  • Book
  • © 2023

Overview

Authors:
  1. Chloë Houston

    1. University of Reading, Reading, UK

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  • Explores representations of the Persian empire in English drama across the early modern period
  • Illustrates how ideas shifted over time, as global trade brought English and Persian people into contact
  • Considers a wide corpus of primary plays

Part of the book series: New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800 (NETRANS)

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: The Imagined Empire

    • Chloë Houston
    Pages 1-26

  3. ‘In This Noble Region’: Politics and Counsel in The Godly Queene Hester (Anonymous, c. 1530)

    • Chloë Houston
    Pages 27-49

  4. ‘[A]dvice Unto a Prince’: Kingship and Counsel in Kyng Daryus (Anonymous, 1565) and Cambises (Thomas Preston, c. 1560)

    • Chloë Houston
    Pages 51-79

  5. ‘A Crown Enchas’d with Pearl and Gold’: Wealth and Absolute Rule in The Warres of Cyrus (Richard Farrant, 1576–1580) and Tamburlaine the Great Parts 1 and 2 (Christopher Marlowe, 1587–1588)

    • Chloë Houston
    Pages 81-103

  6. ‘I Wish to Be None Other but as He’: Friendship and Counsel in The Travailes of the Three English Brothers (1607) by John Day, William Rowley, and George Wilkins and Contemporary Closet Drama

    • Chloë Houston
    Pages 105-131

  7. ‘Read[ing] Philosophy to a King’: Ideals of Monarchy in William Cartwright’s The Royall Slave (1636)

    • Chloë Houston
    Pages 133-157

  8. ‘[R]eally Acted in Persia’: Counsel, Regicide and Restoration in John Denham, the Sophy (1642) and Robert Baron, Mirza (1655)

    • Chloë Houston
    Pages 159-180

  9. To ‘Dispose of Crowns’: Conversion, the Authority of Monarchy and the Issue of Succession: Elkanah Settle’s Cambyses (1667)

    • Chloë Houston
    Pages 181-202

  10. ‘The King, Who Loves the Persian Mode’: Tyranny and Excess in Nathaniel Lee’s The Rival Queens (1677)

    • Chloë Houston
    Pages 203-229

  11. ‘[D]evour’d by Luxury’: Gender, Governance and Absolute Kingship in John Crowne’s Darius, King of Persia (1688) and Colley Cibber’s Xerxes (1699)

    • Chloë Houston
    Pages 231-263

  12. Back Matter

    Pages 265-295
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Keywords

About this book

​This book is a study of the representation of the Persian empire in English drama across the early modern period, from the 1530s to the 1690s. The wide focus of this book, encompassing thirteen dramatic entertainments, both canonical and little-known, allow it to trace the changes and developments in the dramatic use of Persia and its people across one and a half centuries. It explores what Persia signified to English playwrights and audiences in this period; the ideas and associations conjured up by mention of ‘Persia’; and where information about Persia came from. It also considers how ideas about Persia changed with the development of global travel and trade, as English people came into people with Persians for the first time.  In addressing these issues, this book provides an examination not only of the representation of Persia in dramatic material, but of the broader relationship between travel, politics and the theatre in early modern England.

Reviews

"Persia in Early Modern English Drama: 1530-1699: The Imagined Empire is a shrewd, timely and compelling study of the multiple meanings and interests of Persia to English readers and theatregoers over almost two centuries. It proves an immensely rich subject of study - not just revealing English conceptions of Persia and the Middle East as these developed with increased contact, but serving again and again as a powerful vehicle for self-reflection, specifically on domestic political and cultural issues, across this period of significant political change.

Beautifully written and extensively researched, the book is brimming with important details that will interest any scholar of early modern English culture as it traces how English dramatic engagements with Persia look inwards as well as outwards, whether in closet drama or on the public stage, during the very period in which English diplomatic, commercial and political engagements with the East were established and beganto take imperial shape."

Professor Jane Grogan, University College Dublin, author of The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, 1549-1622

“Carefully researched and clearly argued throughout, the book draws attention to specific contexts behind the ever-changing image of Persia from 1530 to 1699, and in the process offers compelling readings of fourteen plays about the Persian Empire, as well as important observations on the origins of imperialism and Orientalism in Britain."

Kurosh Meshkat, The British Library, Persian Gulf History Specialist, The British Library, London, UK

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Reading, Reading, UK

    Chloë Houston

About the author

Chloë Houston is Associate Professor in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading, UK. 

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